Thursday, 05 June 2014

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The weather was so good in this tour and as we got to the area where we were earlier it looked like the animals had gone to another place. But we still stopped the boat and took a better look. After a few minutes one of the passengers spotted the first of at least 15 Harbour porpoises that we saw in the tour, we saw them quite well as the sea was smooth as a mirror and the sun was shining. A little bit later a Minke whale was spotted in the distance. the animal took long deep dives and it was hard to keep track of it. When we were searching for the minke a second minke whale surfaced on the other side so we decided to try to get a better look at that animal. This minke seemed to be alot calmer as it surfaced many time around the same area and was probably feeding close to the bottom. The minke surfaced often close to the boat so we got a good look at the animal. When we had spent a good amount of time with the minke we decided to head further out as we saw splashes in the distance. When we got there we saw a pod of 7-9 White-beaked dolphins. They surfaced often around us and we got a great look at them as well as we could see 2 more minke whales surface in the distance. We headed back to the harbour in a beautiful weather after a good tour with quite curios cetaceans. - Freydís Ósk

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: it was raining very much as we set out and for the first fifteen minutes or so of the tour so we were a bit sceptical at first about how enjoyable the tour would be if it would continue pouring down like this. However, these worries turned out to be for no reason as soon it stopped raining and the rest of the tour turned out to be much better than in the morning. Our inhouse researcher Céline estimates that we saw at least 6 Minke Whales, including a resight by the funny name of 'Smurf', as well as 15-20 Harbour Porpoises. The Minkes were awesome, at times we had two or even four of them within close range of the boat, even two to the back and two to the front, and the blows were both loud and clear. At least twice we thought that a Minke that had dived close to us would resurface next to the boat but while it didn't happen, they would instead resurface in a small distance on the other side, making us believe that they dived under the boat! Totally awesome!

- Baldur Thorvaldsson

Tour at 13:00Report from Hafsúlan: it was raining as we headed out but we could see that further out the clouds were opening and the sun shining through. We could see a lot of birds on our way out but no cetaceans seemed to be feeding with them. We sailed past a big flock and all of a sudden a Minke whale surfaced on our other side! As we watched the animal we could see that there were at least 5 minke whales around us. We watched them surface slowly as the sun shined on their back which made it easy to spot them! at least 15-20 Harbour porpoises were also in the area feeding, some of them surfaced quickly and we could see white splashes from their movement. After we had gotten a good look at the animals we decided to head towards a really big flock of feeding birds. As we got there we saw 2 more minke whales in the area but they disappeared quickly so we decided to head back to the area where we were earlier. When we got there we saw 2 more minke whales that weren't there when we left. It might have been the same minke whale pair as yesterday because they travelled very close together and seemed to be well syncronized. When our time was running out the minke's seemed to get less active and hard to spot so we headed back towards the harbour. It was a good tour with a bit of and experience of Icelandic weather, bit of rain and bit of a sun, and loads of cetaceans!  - Freydís Ósk

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: we went out under rather cloudy conditions towards where Hafsúlan was already. They had had several Minke Whales by the time we were there but it took us a little while to find our first Minke, mainly because we wanted to avoid going too close to the other boats and rather find 'our own' whales. The porpoises popped up here and there but with no aparent group formation. It was only when the tour was roughly half-way through that we got a decent Minke look, the animal was docile and gave us some good surfacing activities. We estimate that at least 3 Minke Whales were seen on this tour and maybe a dozen or so Porpoises - overall an allright tour.

- Baldur Thorvaldsson

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The weather this morning was quite good with an increasing wind out of the north but good conditions overall. We decided to start our search towards the south where we had seen cetaceans the previous day. After about 30 minutes of sailing we spotted a splash and then a black back and a dorsal fin surfaced of our bow. A Minke whale had been spotted! This individual was quite curious at first and surfaced a few times close to our front. A little while later we also spotted another individual whom we also got quite a good look at. After leaving these minkes we searched further out and had a few encounters with some Harbour porpoises who were quite shy but we did get a good look at some of them as they swam past. On our way back to the harbour after a frustrating search for an elusive minke we spotted another minke whale which surfaced a few times close to us and gave a very good ending for a fun tour. But as an extra icing on the cake our researchers onboard indentified this individual as the same minke we had seen at the begining of the tour!

-Ívar Elí

Birds seen on todays tours include: Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Puffins, Black-backed gulls, Arctic skuas, Great skuas, Arctic terns, common guillemots, briddled guillemots, black gulliemots, Razorbills, black-headed gulls and Northern gannets.