THURSDAY, 23 JULY 2015

Tour at 20:30

Report from Hafsúlan: Our vocabulary lacks of words strong enough to describe how awesome this tour was. It was deeply mind-blowing, we got treated with one of the best experience we can get from whale watching ! Having heard about a humpback whale from another boat, we sailed straightforward offshore to find it. After a steady and uninterrupted trip, we got to meet this amazing individual. It was clearly feeding, surfacing and changing directions a lot. It was followed by a flock of stubborn arctic terns, which were clearly determined to get some leftovers. We patiently stayed with this cetacean until it finally showed us its splendid fluke. Luckily, it never went for a long deep dive ! We stuck with this whale, because it was so relaxed, not really minding us. After a while, it displayed some rollings, and we could see its belly and its white pectoral fin up in the air. Then, a pod of white-beaked dolphins showed up ! We spent so much time with the humpback that we decided to leave it and to follow the dolphins. And they did the most amazing thing. They started to follow the whale. The humpback and the dolphins were surfacing together ! At some moments, the dolphins were circling and surrounding it, jumping and leaping. Even the humpback seemed to surface strangely vertically to follow the motion. It was so great to seem socialize like that ! Everyone was very excited, the crew included. We witnessed this ballet until it was time to go home. So we headed back to Reykjavik with the midnight sun in our back, and with beautiful memories in our minds. 

- Guillaume Calcagni

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: After the terrific tours from earlier today, expectation ran high amongst us staff. So of course we proceeded to where we had spotted the humpback whales earlier. Off we set in to the beautiful bay of faxafloi, with a light breeze in our hair and the sun shining.  We had a few fulmars following us out. After 40 mins sailing we soon spotted the large characteristic blow of the humpback about 400 metres infront of us. Soon we had it approach us very close. What a treat we were in for with this individual coming less than 10 metres to us. For the next 40 mins we had rolls, lunges, fluking and even one fin slap. After the time was up we had to make out way back in to port. The steam in was more than pleasant and I even managed to glimpse a minke whale. Unfortunately I was the only person to see it but still an awesome tour. 

-Tommy Torrades

Tour at 14:00

Report from Eldey: On this tour, we headed straight back to the areas where the humpback whales had been spotted earlier. On the way, we first spotted one minke whale, then a small pod of 2-3 harbour porpoises and a while later another minke whale. But we didn't stay long with these animals as we were eager to go back to the humpback whales. It took a while because they were further offshore than this morning, but we managed to find three humpback whales. We could spend a while with each individual and saw fluke-ups from all of them before we had to leave them be and sail back to the harbour. 

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: It took some time but we managed to find the same two humpback whales that has been seen earlier today. Now further north and they seemed busy feeding some kilometer apart. We got closer to one of them and it kept us entertain for a little more than half an hour. The whale surfaced only 2-3 meters from the boat at one time, absolutely amazed us with the close encounter! At the end we also took a short glimpse of the second individual, that was waving its flippers towards us, twice! On our way back we had a humpback surfacing right infront of us and we are actually not sure if it was a third individual or the first one we saw that moved a couple of kilometers east. Either way an absolutely delightful tour with humpbacks! 

- Marcus Bergström 

Tour at 10:00

Report from Eldey: As we were leaving from Reykjavík this morning, we had news from other whale watching boats about humpback whales in Faxaflói. Humpback whales are a very charismatic whale species and we also wanted to show these great whales to our passengers. So we sailed out in to Faxaflói full of hopes to find them, and after about one hour we were rewarded with large blows that we could see in front of us in some distance. We slowly got closer to the animals and could spent a long time with two humpback whales that were moving pretty slowly next to us and were probably resting. They never went for a deep dive so we never got to see a proper fluke-up but they surfaced so close next to us that it didn't matter at all. A brilliant tour with these adorable giants. 

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The weather today was almost the same as yesterday with northerly winds and sunshine. The wind caused some swells further out so the boat was rocking a bit. With the humpback whales from yesterday in the memory we headed straight far out in the bay, hoping to find these large animals. We struggled in the beginning and it was the boat that searched closer to land that found the humpbacks. Before we arrived we could see one of the humpback whales breaching. The whale breached more than 20 times causing huge splashes when it hit the water surface! When we was only 300-400 meters away we saw another whale breach in the distance behind us! So at least 3 humpbacks in the area. But we choose to stay with the one closest to us and it proved to be two individuals traveling close together. giving us very good views. When we left the whales they were still traveling close together. On our way back we had a short encounter with a pod of 3-4 white-beaked dolphins. Seems that we get another day with humpbacks in the bay!

- Marcus Bergström  

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, arctic skua, atlantic puffins, common guillemots and manx shearwaters.