Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We sailed out once again from Grindavík and as we headed out of the harbour we saw a Great Northern Diver (a big bird usually found in lakes but moves to the coast when fresh water starts to freeze up). Once leaving the harbour we headed west in search of the Humpbacks, We looked in the place we left them and a bit further. They didn´t seem to be anywhere around so we changed direction and headed east. Our lovely passengers spotted some White-beaked Dolphins, a pod of 3-5 animals which looked to like our presence as we liked theirs. Playing under and around the boat. We then got word from another whale watching boat about a blow that they saw. We were of. We saw a large pod of 20-30 Harbour Porpoises chasing fish or maybe each other before getting to the area they saw the blow. They only saw it twice and that was it. Unfortunately no humpbacks for this tour. We gave our passengers complimentary tickets and hope they get to see them another day.

-Megan Whittaker

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The wind had really picked up over night so we decided to go from Grindavik, our passengers took a 45 minute bus drive to where our boat was and from there we got shelter from the Reykjanes Peninsula. We sailed East first but there was not much to see in that direction, birds were even few, so we headed further offshore and sailed past Grindavík and went west. After 20 minutes of sailing we saw a big blow, YES!! Humpback Whale, we saw it surface many times and it even brought up its beautiful fluke too. Then we noticed that the pattern under the fluke was different, there must be two Humpback Whales here. Just after I anounced this on the microphone the two surfaced together. Time was running out then and we had to start heading back to Grindavik. Slow start but great ending on a windy tour from Grindavik.

- Megan Whittaker

Birds seen on todays tours include :Kittiwakes, Cormorants, Glaucous Gulls, Lesser Black Backed Gulls, Eider Ducks, Guillemots, Iceland Gulls, Northern Gannets, Great Northern Diver.