Tuesday, 01 July 2014

Unfortunately the 13:00, 14:00, 17:00 and 20:30 tours have been cancelled due to unfavourable weather. If your require further information please email us at elding@elding.is, call us at +354 519 5000 or stop by our office.

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: As we headed out there was a strong southerly wind blowing. It took us long to find something but at last, we managed to get a few good looks at white-beaked dolphins. There were two pods of them, roughly 5 animals each and they were quite close to us. Sadly, they disappeared soon after we spotted them. On the way back, the boat was moving about a lot and some of our passengers got sea sick. Unfortunately, we did not manage to find anything else on they way to the harbour. Quite a rough tour with disappointing sightings.

-Arnór Tumi

Tour at 9:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We left the harbour with a southerly wind and we noticed the swell after we passed the lighthouse of Grotta. Seltjarnarnes, the peninsula with the lighthouse at the end, gave us some shelter at the beginning and end of the tour. Above the swell we managed to see a wide range of seabirds (see list below). We had a lot of encounters with Northern Gannets of different age classes, some of the young ones were still quite dark. The cetaceans were a bit more difficult to observe as they were easily hiding behind some white crestwaves. First we started with a blow seen by passengers which didn't appear again, then there was a Minke Whale popping up once and out of sight. Then we got to see a lot of splashing going on and we could clearly see that a pod of 5-8 White-Beaked Dolphins were active. Breaching, leaping, tail slapping these were the white water producing behaviours which could have been done to gather fish. Probably after their mouths were full of fish they changed their behaviour to travelling. As they were heading into the swell and wind we finally lost them but we had a good look at their "performance". Soon after there was more splashing but far away at the horizon. The pure fact that we could see it at that distance tells us that it must be something fairly big. We spotted these splashes repeatedly about 6 times without seeing the body. Most likely it was a breaching minke. When we arrived in the area where this whale must have been before there was nothing to be discovered. We sailed on and suddenly another minke whale appeared close to the boat but again after arching its back once it was out of sight. We know that there were at least 3-4 minkes around but none of them gave us a chance to observe them well. But thanks to the birds and dolphins which hopefully everybody had a chance to see it was worth going out.

- Carine Zimmermann

Birds seen on todays tours include: Kittiwake, Northern Fulmar, Northern Gannet, Common Guillemot, Atlantic Puffin, Arctic Tern, Arctic Skua, Great Skua, Pomarine Skua, Black-Backed Gull, Herring Gull, Storm Petrel, Manx Shearwater & Eider Duck.