Tuesday, 16 September 2014

Tour at 13:00Report from Hafsúlan: The sky was only slightly clouded and we enjoyed the sun the whole tour through. The water surface still looked quite smooth with very little wind even the boat was constantly going up and down in the swell. We saw some bird life and the most impressive was a huge flock of brent geese flying landwards crossing our way. After not too long, some splashes at the horizon caught our attention. We sailed towards our first of four sightings of white-beaked dolphins which were spread out over the bay in different pods and subgroups of around 20 individuals in total. Several times we saw them leaping and breaching partly synchronous further and closer. After we spent quite a while surrounded by dolphins we searched for something else and we got to an area with 2 minke whales and 4 harbour porpoises. One of the porpoises was a calf in the middle of the adults. This pod has been milling around one minke which we observed for a while while he was probably feeding. Once he created white water as he probably moved abruptly under the water. The second minke was a bit further away but once up short after the other. A very successful tour with 3 different species of cetaceans which we could all watch well.

- Carine Zimmermann

Tour at 09:00Report from Hafsúlan: there was still a bit of swell from the weekend and yesterday but the conditions were otherwise very beautiful, even if the slight western wind made some people uncomfortable. We saw splashes from a small pod of harbour porpoises (ca 5-6) very soon after departure but we never really saw the animals themselves. Once they had vanished, we kept going but were notified by another whale-watching boat of a minke whale roughly in front of Mount Esja. We went there and managed to see this whale on a number of occasions, even if not all that close at times. We knew the tour was saved then but just for the fun of it, we decided to take a small round to see if we might find something else as well. This turned out to be a wise decision for we came upon a location where a small number of northern gannets were diving for fish. Amidst them was even a much better minke whale, also enjoying the feast and so it did, very close to us, seemingly only minding its food and nothing else. After some difficult days due to weather, this fellow hence created a very delightful end to this tour.- Baldur Thorvaldsson

Birds seen on today´s tour include: Eider Ducks, Kittiwakes, Black-backed Gulls, Fulmars, Northern Gannets, Common Guillemots and Brent Geese.