Tuesday, 11 August 2015

Tour at 17:00

Report from Eldey: After the amazing day we had been having we were in a hurry to get out lest we missed something. So we quickly me our way in to Faxaflói bay. Only about 10 minutes some eagle-eyed passengers spotted two harbour porpoises that quickly plopped away.  Myself and Alberto were up on the roof scanning the horizon when we both spotted a large splash on the horizon. We patiently watched again and soon splash after splash was spotted. It could only have been one animal, a breaching humpback whale! It was 6 miles away from us so we had an agonizing steam towards as we watched breach after breach, we only hoped the animal would be too tired to breach for us as we got closer. After what seemed like an age we arrived next to the animal, to be immediately treated to a breach! We were delighted to see it was an individual known as Nettie. Nettie was first spotted 2 weeks earlier and is entangled in fishing gear. This appears not to have slow this animal down too much as it was head slapping, fin slapping, rolling and breaching all very close to the boat. What an amazing tour! We sadly had to make our way back to port but I think everyone was delighted. 

-Tommy Torrades (Princess Banana Hammock)

Tour at 14:00

Report from Hafsúlan: On this tour, we went straight back to the humpback whale we had spotted on the morning tour. The animal had moved closer to land so that it took only about an hour to get there. We stayed with it for a while and got to see some nice fluke ups. As we knew about a second humpback whale in the bay, we also tried to find this animal and, indeed, found it even closer to land than the first. It was Nettie, the humpback whale that is still entangled in a fishing net. Nettie made this tour INCREDIBLE! First, it was rolling on its side and slapped one of its pectoral fins on the water surface multiple times; and as if this wasn't good enough already, Nettie started breaching about 6-7 times right next to us. An amazing encounter because Nettie kept breaching and pec-slapping for a while on this tour! It was brilliant, and I am sure Nettie made a lot of new friends today! 

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: The wind seemed to have calmed but the swell was still a little too much for some but as the wildlife was incredible that most passengers was distracted and forgot all about the boat´s movement. We travelled towards the area þröstur the humpback whale was last spotted and we were once again not disappointed. As we approached we also saw a pod of 6 white-beaked dolphins that came to say hello but got jealous and swam off when we were just concentrating on the whale. After watching þröstur for  a while we went to find the dolphins again and they were a lot happier when our attention was only on them. They were swimming under and around the boat for at least 10-20 minutes and when they got bored they swam off leaving us to sail smoothly home, surfing the swells. This was not the end of the tour however, in the distance big splashes were seen. Another humpback whale that we call Nettie, as unfortunately it is entangled in a fishing net. Sad to see it still entangled but good to see it still alive and energetic as it breached, head slapped, pectoral waved and showed it´s tail many times. Over a week ago the whale watching companies and the coast guard went to try and cut the nets free but it was an unsuccessful mission as it was difficult to approach. Also a storm is forecasted for tomorrow after midday so I don´t think we can do another ´free Nettie´mission. It was an educational and fun tour and everybody went home with a big smile on their face. 

-Megan Whittaker

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: The morning tour on my favorite boat Elding started pretty rough as we were heading out into the swell in Faxaflói. Our sister boats Eldey and Hafsúlan had already found a humpback whale, so we headed towards the same area. It took almost 1,5 hours to get there but then we were rewarded with a humpback whale surfacing only about 50 m away from us a few times. Despite the swell and the waves it was rather easy to follow as it was keeping a constant direction and surfacing very regularly. Since it took so long to find this humpback, we couldn't stay with this animal as long as we wanted but it gave us a few nice fluke ups before we had to leave. On the way back we encountered a small pod of three white-beaked dolphins.  However, they were rather shy and disappeared quickly. But it wasn't too disappointing thanks to the great humpback whale we had spotted earlier.

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan and Eldey: The weather that had been so poor the last two days improved massively this day which made our sailing much better than what we had experienced recently. It took us some time to reach a promising area, after around an hour we found thousands of feeding seabirds which was a great sign that there was more to come. Then we saw a blow in the distance, clearly a whale somewhere in front of us. As we were heading to that area we managed to find a pod of white-beaked dolphins which looked to be around 5 individuals large. We didn´t stop for them as we wanted to continue to the whale but we still got a nice look at them as they travelled through the area. As we approached the whale we found it was a humpback whale! This was a great whale that was very active at the surface as it was constantly lifting its tail high into the air as it dived. The highlight was when the whale breached.... 5 metres away from the boat! This is both extremely beautiful but terrifying and certainly something none of us will forget in a hurry, too bad it didn´t give us a warning so we could get a photo of it!

- Jack Ball and Tommy Torrades

Birds seen on todays tour include: Kittiwakes, puffins, Arctic skuas, Arctic terns, northern fulmars, northern gannets, eider ducks, cormorants, common guillemots, lesser black-backed gulls.