Thursday, 23 August 2012

Tour at 17:00Report from Hafsúlan: When we sailed out of the old harbour in Reykjavík it was raining a little bit but after few minutes the raining stopped and the sea was much calmer than this morning. So we sailed on in this perfect whale watching weather but after only few minutes of sailing we spotted the first but definitely not the last Minke Whale of the tour! After looking at this Minke for a short while we spotted another one close by and decided to try to get a better look at that one. And that is how the hole trip was, we cept seeing new and new Minke whales surfacing! All in all we had 6-8 Minke Whales on this tour surfacing very close at times and then further away as well. This was very unique tour, seeing so many Minke Whales so close to Reykjavík!

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: we went straight out to the area where Hafsúlan had been lucky in the morning but nothing was there. Then we sailed further out and after about half an hour our research volunteer Emma spotted our first Minke Whale of the tour. We saw it a few times but then lost it. We took off and noticed a group of Northern Gannets diving in a distance. In the midst of that group we saw a Minke Whale surfacing twice but again we lost it. Then we got the news from our sistership that there were several Minke Whales close to Reykjavik and went there. It was about five sea miles away so it was some sailing but it paid off as just off Kjalarnes Peninsula there were at least 3-4 Minke Whales. It was hard to choose which direction to look as they were popping up all around us!

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We started our tour with a big rain shower which disappeared the more we sailed out, everybody used our warm overalls. The guide spotted then a pod of 6-8 White Beaked Dolphins which surfaced many times close to our boat. We left them in peace then to try to find our Minkes Whales and sailed so long without spotting anything, but these tricky beautiful creatures were actually close to land and we spotted 3 Minke Whales near the land on the way back, and saw two different individual really close to the boat and one further. It was a great beginning and end of tour in Faxafloi bay.

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: In this tour we spotted two species in total. We saw a minke whale quite close to land. This one was allowing us to see it very well, where it surfaced quite often right in front of the boat. After few minutes this minke got a bit elusive so we decided to head further out. As we got further out in the bay we saw few pods of white-beaked dolphins! Some of them were breaching few times but they were also little bit elusive but still we managed to see them very well. We were actually seeing dolphins everywhere after that in a very large area in the bay. On the way back home we spotted another minke whale! It was a very nice surprise to end the tour with a very nice minke whale only 20 minutes away from the harbour in Reykjavík.

Tour at 9:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We went out in a cloudy misty weather, was a bit cold as well and sweally but just a little bit. People were brave and into finding our cetaceans. Close to land, we found 3-4 Minke Whales but they just came to the surface once or twice very fast and were in the same area not far from each other, it seemed like they were busy going down to the water column to gather and hunt fish, so a bit elusive. The highlights of the tour were the White Beaked Dolphins though, and we spotted them from far very easily since two of them were jumping like 2-3 meters above the water surface, that we saw the whole body of these two dolphins out of the water. It was just amazing. They breached up straight to the air so many times that we couldn't count it anymore; this was a feeding behaviour, scaring fish from different side to gather it tight and catch it more easily.

Tour at 09:00Report from Skrúður: We headed out the beautiful but little windy Faxaflói bay this morning. After a short sail we saw a Minke Whale that surfaced few times but it was a bit elusive so after looking at it for a short while we decided to head further out. We did look for a little while and were rewarded for that with two pods of White Beaked Dolphins close to each other! These were very playful dolphins that came very close to the boat to look at us. We spent as long time as we could with these beautiful animals but like always in the end it was time to head back to Reykjavík.