Sunday, 22 May 2016

Tour at 17:00

Report from Eldey: The wind had picked up a little so the water was not as smooth as before but it was still sunny and the views around were amazing. When we were sailing for about 45 minutes the passengers spotted a humpback whale close to us. The animal was playfully rolling around to show us its belly and spy hopping close to the boat. It was a wonderful encounter and everybody managed to get a good look. We spotted another humpback whale in the distance and decided to get a closer look. The animal was quite elusive only coming up occasionally to breathe which made it difficult to find. But once we were closer it did surface a few times near the boat. After this encounter we had to travel back to Reykjavik but on our way back a minke whale surfaced 5 meters from the boat. Unfortunately most passengers had gone inside and did not see the animal. We also saw 3 harbour porpoises close to Reykjavik which was a nice ending to a beautiful day of whale watching.

- Anouk

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: The sun was still shining bright and the water was very smooth when we sailed out from Reykjavik. Quite soon we spotted about 5 harbour porpoises very close to the boat but after they surfaced a few times we did not see them anymore. We were informed by the captain that there was a minke whale close to us and we saw it surfacing a few times. While looking at the minke whale we spotted a blow and some splashes in the distance, it was a humpback whale ! When we reached it we could see it was displaying fascinating surface feeding behavior, lunging and rolling on the sea surface. It came very close to the boat and it is possible that the animal was using the boat to trap the fish while feeding. Because this whale was so close we could clearly see its whole body underwater. When this individual went for a deep dive, we decided to check out another blow we saw in a distance and found a second humpback whale. This one was more elusive but we managed to have satisfying looks. Unfortunately it was due time soon enough and we had to travel back to Reykjavik and leave this humpback.

- Anouk & Guillaume 

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: We went out in beautiful weather, albeit a little cold but that was ok because we had our warm overalls. The conditions were very good and the sea was so still, it was like glass. We hadn’t traveled for a long time when we spotted some harbour porpoises so we slowed down and saw that we had a very large pod of about 10 - 15 harbour porpoises in two pods. Their  behaviour was very unusual because they are very elusive creatures but this pod wasn’t elusive at all. They were swimming very close to the boat so we could have a good look at them and they even watch them swim towards us at one point and were actually playful. In the midst of all this wonder we saw two minke whales so we were surrounded by wildlife. Then another minke surfaced and then another, we saw 3 or 4 more minke whales here and there during the tour so they were 5-6 in total. We then got a call from another whale watching boat that they had spotted a blow from a humpback whale so we decided to check that out. When we spotted the humpback it was behaving very unusually, they often come up for air three or four times before they go for a deeper dive but this one only came up once between longer dives After some patience we had gotten a good look at it and decided to look for what we thought was another humpback but turned out to be a minke, we had such good conditions that the blow from the minke whale which is usually very difficult to spot, was very clear. We then went back to the humpback to take a better look at it and saw that there were two of them there so we stayed awhile and enjoyed they’re company. On the way back we saw at least another 10-15 harbour porpoises, it was such a joy to see them traveling towards us just under the surface, One of them (the one we had seen earlier even did some tail-slapping! Amazing tour with good weather and three species!

-Bryndis

Bird species seen on today's tours include: herring gull, black backed gull, arctic tern, puffin, gannet, eider duck, fulmur, kittiwake, manx shearwater, arctic skua, great skua, common guillemots.