Thursday, 1 February 2024

Today we will be operating on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 13:00 Classic Whale Watching tour. Make sure to dress according to weather, as it is usually colder at sea than on land.

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

Report from Eldey: The sun was yet to rise, and we had a wonderful calm sailing through the almost-dark bay in the early morning. The daylight was slowly starting to come through, and we could make out the beautiful landscape around us and the heads of two harbour seals! We started by exploring the islands around Reykjavik, where in the past few weeks whales have been feeding on the abundance of fish that was apparently close to the city. Today, the large whales seemed to have ventured further out into the bay, but we did still see 3 harbour porpoises surfacing several times. We went further out, and there we saw it - the fluke of a humpback whale! This individual was Ekki, known for not wanting to show his tailfin. Today was a special day because Ekki was fluking often, even performing inverted tailslaps, and he came very close to our boat! A wonderful morning.

- Eline van Aalderink

Report from Eldey: After having success in the morning in finding a whale we set off once again for more, this time in the rain. We headed back to where we left the whale this morning but it was no longer here. We searched and searched but with no luck. It took nearly 2 hours of the trip for us to find them once again. Once again this humpback whale was much closer to land as it had been for the previous weeks. We saw it here along with 4 grey seals and 2 harbour seals. The whale, Ekki, was moving very slowly close to the land. It turned out they were swimming right towards a second humpback! This one we have also seen a lot recently, with the unusual skin patterns. We saw them both now go for many fluke dives. We then ended the tour with this second humpback coming right up to us and logging for a couple minutes before diving. It was incredible to be so close whilst this happened.

- Rob Hyman

Northern fulmar, razorbill, common guillemot, black guillemot, eider duck, herring gull, black-legged kittiwake, herring gull, great black-backed gull, Great cormorant, European shag, Northern gannet