Thursday, 11 September 2014

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: Because we spent most of this tour fairly close to shore there were less waves and it did not take us very long to find the first minke whale. That was how our non-stop sighting period started. For about one and a half hours we were constantly watching some minke whale, at least 3 different ones in total. The first individual we saw was on its own, but then we found a pair of them. It took us a while to realize that there were two individuals moving around together. At first we were surprised at how often "this individual" surfaced, but the mystery cleared itself up as the two then surfaced at the same time. From the way they synchronised their behaviour it almost looked like they were surface-feeding in a coordinated manner. On the way back the captain even decided to give our passengers some nice looks at the islands in front of the city before we returned to the harbour.

- Carine Zimmermann

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: As we headed back out into the bay for our second tour of the day, there was still quite a lot of wind and waves. Remembering our difficulties to find animals in the morning we did not get our hopes up too high, but it turned out we had no reason to worry! It didn´t even take us 30 minutes to find the first minke whale. And the trip only got better from there: while the first individual was fairly shy and disappeared after a few surfacings some of the following animals were much more "friendly". In total we saw at least 3 or 4 different individuals and one of them surfaced right next to our boat three times. There were a lot of "ooh"s and "aah"s accompanying these close approaches - fantastic! Since we were fairly close to shore we managed to watch the minke whales for quite some time - and also got a look at two pods of harbour porpoises. We got some more roller-coaster moments on our way back and were all very happy with the outcome of this great tour.

- Linda

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The bay was windy and wavy with the sun sometimes peaking through the clouds and some short rainy periods. In these difficult weather and sea conditions it took us quite some time until we finally found a minke whale. It was fairly close to the boat and gave us a nice look at its side, but unfortunately it only surfaced once and not everyone on board got to see it. But then our luck turned for the better and our patience got rewarded as we found a pod of white-beaked dolphins. They were in a fairly compact group, staying close together. We saw at least 7 individuals at one point, among them one juvenile. They were leaping out of the water repeatedly and one of them surprised us with its huge size. As they moved close to the boat we were even able to track their movements below the water surface. After adding an additional 30 minutes to the tour to enjoy these animals it was then time to head back into the harbour.

- Carine Zimmermann