Thursday, 08 October 2015

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: The weather alternated between light rain and cloudy sky. The sea conditions got even better than this morning so it was almost flat sea. We searched a little bit more south than the previous tour. After one and half hour without any sightings, we slowed down close to some northern gannets and kittiwakes. The birds were resting on the surface, not showing any tendencies of feeding. Suddenly a minke whale surfaced only 30 meters from the boat! Maybe it got as surprised as we, because it didn't reappear again. A bit disappointing that when we finally found a whale that it was so elusive. We continued on and soon saw another minke whale, this was Humpie! Our old friend, seen in the bay since 2011. Good to see him still going strong. Sadly Humpie decided only to surface twice so we didn't manage to get the views we wanted. Therefor, back in harbour we gave out complimentary tickets to our passengers.

- Marcus Bergström  

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: The first tour today started with quite some rain that would only stop for a few minutes every now and then and otherwise accompany us throughout the whole tour. The sea conditions, on the other hand, were nice with almost no swell in the bay so that we had a rare tour without any seasick passengers! We had a difficult start on this tour. Even though there were at least 3 minke whales in the Bay, they only popped up once or twice, and you had to look in the right direction at the right time. Only a couple of lucky passengers managed to get a look at one of them before they disappeared. Frustrating but we didn't give up but kept searching. Then suddenly, white-beaked dolphins appeared out of nowhere right in front of us and started bow-riding and playing around the boat. It was only 2 individuals, however, they were absolutely fun to watch and gave as a great time. After the dolphins left to do other things, we were hoping to find another minke whale, but instead got another short glimpse at a group of 3-4 white-beaked dolphins before we headed back to the harbour.

- Hanna Michel

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, Iceland gulls, glaucous gulls, great black-backed gulls, lesser black-backed gulls, eider ducks.