Thursday. 22 October 2015

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: Sea conditions couldn't be better than this afternoon and it had stopped raining. With this weather it was easy to spot animals from a long distance. Our first sighting were 3-4 harbour porpoises, it was difficult to spot them because they were quite elusive so we kept on going out on the bay. We saw a big flock of birds in front of us and decided to give it a good look. When we got closer we spotted a minke whale, this was a whale we know well and call Humpy. The minke whale was feeding with the birds on the surface so this was a great show for everyone. While we watched the minke we spotted 2-3 white beaked dolphins close by. This was overall a great tour with perfect sea conditions and good sightings.

-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: The sea conditions out in the bay this morning were even better than expected with a flat sea and just a little bit of swell. It took a while to get to see a whale on this tour, but after a good hour of sailing another boat spotted a minke whale and informed us about it. Just a few minutes later after heading into the same area we saw the minke whale for the first time surfacing within a flock of different bird species resting on the water surface. It tuned out to be the best minke whale encounter we had in some time now, since this minke didn't seem to mind our presence at all. We slowly managed to get closer and a few times the minke even headed towards our boat and surfaced just meters away from us. In the great conditions we had today it was also not too difficult to keep track of it after it went for dives, so we could spent a fairly long time with this fantastic minke whale that interestingly often surfaced near resting birds! As we slowly puttered back to the harbour, we had again some rain falling upon us, as it happened a few times during the tour, but the minke whale totally made up for both the rain and the cold. 

- Hanna Michel

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, lesser & great black-backed gulls, common guillemots, Iceland gulls, and glaucous gulls.