THURSDAY, 16 JULY 2015

Tour at 20:30

Report from Hafsúlan: We sailed out in a nice setting with the sun peaking through the clouds and with weak winds. The search for cetaceans proved to be harder than earlier today. We of course tried to find the humpback whale again but failed with that. After one hour of sailing the guide spotted a blow further out in the bay. When we got closer a minke whale was heading in our direction. The whale surfaced within 200 meters twice before going for a deeper dive, enable us to have a good look at it before it went down. After this encounter we continued further out and manage to see 2 blows in the distance but no whale when we got closer the locations. Just before we started heading back we found the second minke whale of the tour. We could follow this animal for a while and it surfaced really close to us. A good ending and we could started our journey back towards harbour, with the midnight sun in our back showing a bright orange/blood red color.

- Marcus Bergström 

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We were blessed to find the whales where we left them, so close to the harbour ! Rapidly after leaving Reykjavik, we found one minke whale. We took few minutes to try to follow this individual, but again quickly we spotted a big blow and shiny black back in the distance. Sailing under a perfect sun, with a totally flat sea and almost no wind, we finally met again the humpback whale ! We took our time, following this individual. It seemed to take pleasure to tease us, disappearing in long deep dives, and never showing its fluke. But we managed to get very close looks, and it even surfaced next to us, almost touching the boat ! We could clearly see the big white pectoral fins underwater, those wing-looking fins that give the nickname of angel of the sea to those whales. After a very enjoyable moment with this humpback, we finally headed further offshore to try to find other species. In the process we met 4 more minke whales, two almost traveling together. This gave us the chance to have very nice look at those cetaceans. Finally, we had to get back to Reykjavik. It was about time, since clouds showed up with light rain and weather got chilly while the wind was rising. It was a very nice tour, maybe the best 17:00 trip of the season so far, regarding the weather and the sea condition. 

- Guillaume Calcagni

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: We headed out from Reykjavík harbour and almost immediately spotted the humpback whale again far away in the distance. We sailed towards where we thought we'd spotted it but it turned out to be a very elusive humpback so we didn't spot it for another 20 minutes when it only showed itself for a tiny moment and then disappeared. We decided to leave it alone and headed further out into the whale spotting area where we located a pod of 7 white beaked dolphins. We sailed with them for a bit until Hafsúlan located our humpback again and this time it was in a much more of a whale watching mood. So off we went and followed it at a leisurely pace until we ran out of time and had to turn back to harbour. Smiles all around on this fantastic summer trip!

- Svala Jónsdóttir

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: On this still overcast afternoon we left the harbour looking for cetaceans, and in particular the humpback whale we spotted on the morning tour. As on the earlier tour, we didn't get far until we saw our first minke whale which came up not far from the boat. During our stay with this animal we realized that we were surrounded by minke whales after a short period following that one individual to where it seemed to be feeding. We turned our engines off and enjoyed having the animals around for a while, while the sea conditions improved noticeable. While scouting the sea for other species, we managed to spot 3 harbour porpoises and again splashes in the distance, at least 5 kilometers away. The blow seemed to differ from a minke whale, which was the right observation, since it turned out to be the blow of the HUMPBACK WHALE that we saw on the morning tour. Trying to move closer to it we realized how close we were to the harbour. We watched the whale for a while, traveling and logging very close to the island Akurey until we had to to finish our trip and head back home. Estimating 4-5 minke whales in total.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding; We located three Minke whales close to the harbour and then we noticed a blow not far from us and that when we located a humpback whale! It was such a small humpback that I first mistook it for a large minke but then it came up again and it was unmistakably a humpback. Soon the other boats joined us which might have spooked the humpback a bit so the other boats soon fell away and we spent some time following it at a slow pace until we decided to check if we'd find other animals further out. We located one last minke before heading back to harbour with a lot of happy passengers

- Svala Jónsdóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: This morning started out a little bit windy, resulting in some swell on our tour. Even though, we left the harbour excited to see many cetaceans. We were traveling towards one of our favorite areas to spot minke whales, but we never made it there, since we had several encounters with marine mammals after just a short trip. It started out with a shy minke whale, and soon we had a pod of white- beaked dolphins with 4-5 dolphins as well as even more minke whales. And then there it was, a huge splash in the distance. In an instance everybody knew, HUMPBACK WHALE. We managed to get a good look at the very small individual, which was around 8 meters long. Since we were running out of time we had to head back to Reykjaviks harbour, leaving us with some great memories. Estimating 3-4 minke whales in total.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, common guillemots, puffins, arctic skuas, great skuas, arctic terns, black-backed gulls.