Tour at 20:30
Report from Elding: A flat sea and weak winds gave us the best conditions of spotting some whales on this midnight tour. The sun also peaked through the clouds from time to time, giving us a beautiful scenery around us. We sailed straight out for half an hour and reached an area where we found 2-3 minke whales surfacing calmly, clearly resting. At the same time we had white-beaked dolphins all around us! They were jumping and leaping in the distance and 2-3 pods stayed close to our boat. After a while we turned off the engine letting the stunning surrounding speak for itself. We got to witness something remarkable. At one point all dolphins in the area started jumping and tail slapping, like the were communicating to each other. Suddenly they all traveled together into a large pod of 50+ individuals and more were traveling towards the large pod in the distance. It seemed that the dolphins decided to join up and soon all dolphins in the bay were together starting traveling north. Very interesting to observe! On our way back we encountered dolphins still traveling towards the large pod and 2 minke whales, all together with the live music we had onboard. A magical evening out on Faxaflói!
- Marcus Bergström
Tour at 17:00
Report from Hafsúlan: After such a great tour in the afternoon we had great optimism about this tour, so off we departed in to the shallow bay of faxafloi. I spotted two minkes whales from about 3 km away and we steamed in their direction. One of the individuals was spider again, but he proved much more shy than in the earlier tour. We lost sight of them and respotted them several times. After a long time with what became 3 minkes we went in search of dolphins coming across another minke. Then we spotted some white beaked dolphins breaching and leaping quite far in the distance. Of course as soon as we approached they went in to stealth mode and it took us a few minutes to spot them. There they split in to two pods with 11 individuals going left staying near the boat and 3 going right seemingly pursuing a minke whale. We stuck with the larger pod for a few minutes before heading back to port.
- Tommy Torrades
Tour at 14:00
Report from Elding: The weather did not seem to have decided whether it should be sunny or cloudy when we left the harbour. The panorama was split in half, with a blue side and dark grey cloudy side. As if the landscape was not odd enough, we spotted something unusualy close to the harbour. The animal surfaced one time to never appear again, without letting us time to identify it. Maybe it was one harbour porpoise, unfortunately this hypothesis cannot be validated nor it can be rejected. We did not spend much time to grieve on this as some white-beaked dolphins were spotted a little bith further offshore. We met a pod (5-7) of those cetaceans traveling in front of other whale watching boat. There was many boats watching the same group, se we took few good looks before going away to look for other species. In our journey we found a shy minke whale that surfaced close to the boat before taking a deep dive and vanishing. We went back where we were before to take closer looks to the white-beaked dolphins and witness their beautiful white patterns. After spending some quality time with the dolphins, we traveled further away to find ourselves surrounded by 3 minke whales ! Sometime they were traveling slowly, sometime they were busy taking long deep dives. Many minke whales were surfacing in the distance and it was hard to tell if it was the same ones, or different ones. We eventually had to come back to Reykjavik, under slightly rainy conditions and strong winds. Icelandic weather was back.
- Guillaume Calcagni
Tour at 13:00
Report from Hafsúlan: Another beautiful day here in Reykjavik as we made our way out in to the bay. We had a keen eyed passenger who spotted a harbour porpoise just beside akurey. We didn´t stay and look because we had reports of several minke whales near the surface and we steamed out to meet them. We arrived in a few minutes and we were lucky to spot 4 minke whales very close to one another, including an individual names spider. We had some terrific encounters with the minkes feeding very close to the boat. We eventually decided to tear ourselves from theses beautiful animals in search of dolphins. Continuing with the good fortune of the tour we stumbled upon some white beaked dolphins very soon after and we had them playing with the boat, there were over 20 individuals all around the boat. A fantastic way to end the tour.
- Tommy Torrades
Tour at 10:00
Report from Elding: Did a heat wave strike on Faxaflói Bay ? Nobody can tell for now, but what is sure is that the trend of nice weather and sea conditions we witnessed the past few days culminated on this tour. It was so sunny that it would not be a surprise if some passengers (including the guide) came back home with some sunburns. There was definitively a good mood in the air during our travel, and the joy reached its peak when we found a pod (6-10) of white-beaked dolphins busy feeding. They were surfacing a lot, always changing directions. When we came closer, they stopped their activity and began to travel very slowly, allowing us to get close to them. Somehow it was calming to look at them softly surface in a quiet pace. We stayed for a long time with the dolphins before leaving to look for other species. We finally met two minke whales lazily moving, probably also resting. We were blessed to see those cetaceans surface close to us without taking deep dives, traveling at the same speed than the easy-going dolphins. That was a very relaxing tour, and we could quiet our mind in a wildlife that seemed to have taken a replenishing break.
- Guillaume Calcagni
Tour at 09:00
Report from Hafsúlan: On this beautiful morning we left the harbour in search of cetaceans. Not far from Reykjavik we encountered our first animals, a small pod of white- beaked dolphins, 3 individuals. Unfortunately they seemed very shy, and so we decided to let them be and look for other marine mammals. Our search was cut short again by a minke whale in front of the boat. After this encounter the tour started to repeat itself, spotting several pods of white- beaked dolphins and minke whales on. We had some beautiful, close encounters with some of the cetaceans throughout the tour. The calm and sunny day gave the opportunity for some very nice pictures of the animals and Iceland's nice landscape. At some point we had to turn back and leave the animals behind. Estimating 4-6 minke whales and 12-18 white- beaked dolphins.
- Michaela Buchbauer
Birds encountered on today's tours: northern fulmars, common guillemots, puffins, kittiwakes, arctic terns, black backed gulls.
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