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Thursday, 14 September 2023
Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00 and 14:00 Premium Whale tour and on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00 and 13:00 Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land.
- CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 9:00, 13:00
- PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
- PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00
Join today's tours:
This is the original whale watching tour from Reykjavík! Join our highly enthusiastic and experienced team in the search for whales, dolphins and birds of Faxaflói bay! Most common wildlife encountered are humpbacks, minkes, dolphins and porpoises.
An exhilarating premium tour starting from the Old Harbour in Reykjavík, with daily departures from 1 Apr - 31 Oct. A personal, small group tour with only 12 person per boat, a specially trained wildlife guide and a certified RIB boat captain.
CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00
Report from Eldey: What a glorious morning in the harbour as we set sail. There was very little wind, no clouds and no swell - a perfect day to find some cetaceans. We sailed out and as we did the wind picked up a little but we just put on an overall and went on our quest. We didn't have to look for long when we found a 3 pods of 15 white beaked dolphins! These were quite a fun bunch and we were bow riding and coming very close to us. We stayed for a little bit but as we spotted a blow on the horizon decided to investigate this. We went further into the bay and saw 5 minke whales, in one spot! They were popping up all around us and came very close multiple times. We had stumbled onto a feeding frenzy with birds, more (a pod of 9) dolphins and minkes all around us! We stayed as long as we could before running out of time and heading back to Reykjavik with a warm sun on our faces.
- Pedro Teixeira
CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
Report from Eldey: A lovely day was upon us as we head out to the open ocean to try to see some cetacean activity! The sun was shining in the clear sky and the wind was making a few white horses, but nothing bad. We spotted a few fins and little spouts after 1 hour into our tour, they were from a pod of 8 white-beaked dolphins that were very friendly with us and made a few close encounters with our boat. Off into the distance with started to see even more blows and as we approached them we could see that they were from another species, 5 to 6 minke whales together with another pod of 5 to 6 of the same species of dolphins that came suuuper close to us as we could see the white pectoral fins and even hear them! We stayed as long as we could but the time was up and we had to start heading back to the harbour of Reykjavík. Good day in the bay!
- Anna Richter
Bird species encountered today include:
Artic skua, Northern fulmar, Northern gannet, eider duck, manx and sooty shearwater, herring gull, lesser and great black backed gull, black legged kittiwake
Wildlife seen on today's tours:
The Minke Whale is the most common whale around Iceland and actually the world thus it is one of the main species we encounter on our whale watching tours. It is one of few species that don’t mind coming to shallower waters like here in Faxaflói Bay to feed on the abundant food available to them.
The white-beaked dolphin is the most common dolphin found in the surrounding waters of Iceland and is seen not only in the summer but winter too usually in larger numbers, hundreds sometimes. When feeding they show energetic behaviour such as breaching out of the water and coming down with a big splash and bursts of fast swimming.