Thursday, 24 April 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Elding: With the sun at our backs we sailed forth from Reykjavík hoping to have another successful tour as the morning had been. When we had been sailing for just over 30 minutes we came across a pod of 10-15 Harbour Porpoise that were actually fun to watch! They were very calm around the boat and were content to swim beside us for quite a long time, much better than they normally are! We moved on and managed to find a Minke Whale that was much more visible than the ones in the morning, it surfaced several times slowly and calmly. It was like it knew it needed everyone to get a good look at it. But while we were watching this whale we heard about another whale in the area, a bigger whale. It was across the bay but when we eventually got there it was the Humpback Whale that we´d hoped to see! And it was a huge one! It was surfacing and raising its massive fluke into the air, once only around 50m away! And with the sun bouncing off its back it was a very pretty sight too. A very successful tour with excellent weather.

- Jack Ball

Tour at 09:00

Report from Elding: We had ourselves a very beautiful day today, today actually marks the first day of summer in Iceland. And it showed it! We were greeted as we left Reykjavík by a huge rainbow that stretched across the sky and during the tour we had all different sorts of weather. But the sea was very calm throughout so it was always relaxing. During the tour we managed to get three sightings of Minke Whales, each time the minkes were quite elusive and would appear and disappear quite often. One of the minkes though actually surfaced very close to the boat once though before diving, so we managed to get a great look at one of the minkes. The highlight though was the birds, along with the new Puffins in the area we were contantly surrounded by diving Northern Gannets which were plunging into the water at high speeds all around the boat. One gannet actually took the risk of diving within a metre of the boat, to the surprise of many passengers who were beside it!

- Jack Ball

Birds seen on todays tour include: Northern Gannet, Atlantic Puffin, Arctic Skua, Northern Fulmar, Kittiwake, Eider Duck, Common Guillemot, Razorbill, Black-Backed Gull.