- Image
- Image
- Image
Tuesday, 12 September 2023
Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00 and 14:00 Premium Whale tour and on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00 and 13:00 Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land.
- CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00
- PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
- CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
- PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00
Join today's tours:
This is the original whale watching tour from Reykjavík! Join our highly enthusiastic and experienced team in the search for whales, dolphins and birds of Faxaflói bay! Most common wildlife encountered are humpbacks, minkes, dolphins and porpoises.
An exhilarating premium tour starting from the Old Harbour in Reykjavík, with daily departures from 1 Apr - 31 Oct. A personal, small group tour with only 12 person per boat, a specially trained wildlife guide and a certified RIB boat captain.
CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00
Report from Eldey: With a nice Northern breeze and a clear sky we sailed out the bay with very good sea conditions and great visibility. We just spotted 1 pod of harbour porpoises just outside the port and it was a good start, even if not many many passengers managed to see them because of their speed. After a while, admiring the landscape and gettin warm under the sun, I spotted a big blow in the distance, right in front of us. This was clearly an humpback whale that was roaming that area. We got super excited as we did not see any humpack since weeks and once closer, we could see this individual going for a deeper dive few times, showing us all its elegance. We compared this individual in the ID catalogue and we found out this one was only seen once in the bay last June. After spending some quality time with it, we also had a chance to spot some white beaked dolphins, a bit elusive and scattered around. They were around 7. At the end, we coould not end the tour looking for another species: we saw 3 minke whales all in the same area. It was a very cool tour as we could see all the 4 common species of Faxafloi!!!!
- Marta Filippini
CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
Report from Eldey: We sailed out in this sunny afternoon, hoping to reiterate the sightings of this morning. As we entered an activity zone, with several small groups of birds passing by, we encountered our first 2 minke whales, one of which came really close to us. We then proceeded to try and find what was making a big splash. sadly, after waiting a while, it didn't appear. But oddly enough, 3 white beaked dolphins came to see us and bowride for a long time. As we decided to leave the zone we had found them, they kept following us from up close, even jumping for everyones' enjoyment. As we decide to leave this animals be, we further encountered 2 minke whales crossing our paths, as a last enjoyable sighting of the day.
- Alexandre Paumier
Birdlife encountered today:
Northern fulmar, Northern gannet, manx shearwater, red-legged kittiwakes, lesser black-backed seagull
Wildlife encountered today:
The Humpback Whale is quite spectacular undergoing the longest migration of any mammal (5176miles/8334km one way), attracting females by singing to them and of course their energetic nature. On many occasions humpbacks have been seen breaching, tail slapping, fin slapping, blowing bubbles and spy hopping just to mention a few. The humpback is also one of the larger whales we encounter
The Minke Whale is the most common whale around Iceland and actually the world thus it is one of the main species we encounter on our whale watching tours. It is one of few species that don’t mind coming to shallower waters like here in Faxaflói Bay to feed on the abundant food available to them.
The white-beaked dolphin is the most common dolphin found in the surrounding waters of Iceland and is seen not only in the summer but winter too usually in larger numbers, hundreds sometimes. When feeding they show energetic behaviour such as breaching out of the water and coming down with a big splash and bursts of fast swimming.
The Harbour Porpoise is the smallest and most abundant cetacean around Iceland. They are usually shy but occasionally they come and play around the boats. They can be relatively hard to spot from a distance due to their size and their abundance depends entirely on the food availability of our shores since they are opportunistic feeders.