Thursday, 15 January 2026

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00

All whale watching tours are on schedule today from Reykjavík! Remember to dress according to weather and feel free to borrow our thermal overalls if needed!

Report from Eldey: We had wonderful weather today! Calm seas, blue skies and the wind only started to pick up a little bit towards the end of the tour. After leaving the harbour, we sailed between the islands and started our search between Lundey and Esja (where we had found a whale yesterday). However, after searching for a while, there were no signs of any cetaceans. We did see plenty of sea ice with many seabirds taking a break and resting on the floating chunks. We decided to continue our tour, and soon heard on the radio that another boat had spotted something so we turned and headed in their direction. When we got there, we saw that they had found a humpback whale! Not just any humpback either, this was Banana! Our winter resident, who's been with us around the islands since October! At first Banana was very calm and even started logging at the surface right next to our boat - taking a little power nap. While we were waiting between surface sequences, we also spotted 2 harbour porpoises very briefly before they disappeared looking for more fish to eat. Then it seemed like they woke up and started to swim around a bit more, changing directions and showing of their beautiful tail. All of a sudden - Banana breached! Almost their whole body came shooting up out of the water! After that Banana calmed down a little again. We finished off with an incredibly close encounter as Banana swam down the right side of Eldey only 20 metres away!

- Emily Erskine

Eider duck, great northern diver, European shag, herring gull, razorbill, black guillemot, common guillemot, greater black-backed gull, lesser black-backed gull, black-legged kittiwake