Sunday, 9 February 2025

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 9:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00

Report from Eldey: What a day! The weather was a bit on the wild side—strong winds and light rain—but nothing could stop us. We set sail into Faxaflói, heading toward Hafnarfjörður harbor, which has been our lucky spot for sightings lately. After about an hour and a half of cruising, we finally caught a glimpse of a humpback whale! It was pretty close to land, maybe feeding, since it was doing these short dives. And honestly, I thought it was just going to keep on chilling. But nope, out of nowhere, the whale surprised us all with a HUGE breach! My jaw hit the floor. It’s been way too long since I’ve seen one of those in action. The whale was totally vibing and didn’t seem to mind us being there. But wait, the excitement didn’t end there! On the way back, we spotted another humpback, and this one was showing off its fluke left and right. Just when we thought we’d seen it all, this whale launched into a breach too! Talk about a double whammy. Honestly, the whole trip felt like it was straight out of a whale-lover’s dream. Faxaflói, you’ve officially won my heart. Can’t wait for the next adventure!

- Mariana Veloso

Report Eldey: This afternoon, the rain and wind picked up quite a lot so our tour was the full Icelandic experience! We headed straight back to the area where we found the whales earlier and soon enough, we found our first humpback whale! This was the same individual that we saw second on our morning tour, with very interesting scarring on its body. The scarring makes it easy to identify as our friend Pongo. Pongo was feeding very actively, moving and changing direction a lot to keep us on our toes. Amongst Pongo's many fluke dives, we noticed that there were actually two whales in the same area! We decided to stay with Pongo while the other boats went to the second individual and were treated to constant flukes and even a couple of very close encounters! Unfortunately, after enduring the horizontal rain for a while to watching these whales, we did have to turn and make our way back towards Reykjavik. A true Icelandic adventure this afternoon!

- Emily Erskine

Northern gannet, northern fulmar, greater black-backed gull, lesser black-backed gull, eider duck, European shag, great cormorant, black guillemot, common guillemot