Tuesday, 29 April 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: Though at the beginning of the tour we had to endure some rain it quickly cleared and the sun made a few appearances, good old unpredictable Icelandic weather. But the sea was still very calm and our sailing was nothing but smooth. And this afternoon we managed to find one more species than the morning, we found ourselves the White-Beaked Dolphins plus more Minke Whales! Over the course of the tour we saw around 30 dolphins, we kept finding many small pods over and over again! And sometimes they were leaping out of the water, very high into the air before coming down with a huge splash. We also found a pair of minke whales, it was a mother and calf! A beautiful baby minke! And they were curious around our boat as they were surfacing right beside us several times, once we saw the whole whale under the surface of the water swimming beside us just before it surfaced! It was a really excellent tour, seeing a calf is always such a pleasure!

- Jack Ball

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The good weather from recent days has carried on into today, we really hope it´ll stay like this the entire summer. Though it was cloudy the sea was incredibly calm and the sailing all day was excellent. And nature provided us with a very good day too, this morning we sighted around 4 Minke Whales! With our boat there were three and in the distance there was at least one more but there could easily have been others. For parts of the tour there were also Northern Gannets diving into the water all around us, making for some great bird watching too. Because we were close to so many minkes we were rarely without seeing something, when one was diving another would be surfacing. We even recognised one of the whales, it was a good friend Peanut! The time really flew because of this so after a hectic morning we headed back to Reykjavík.

- Jack Ball

Birds seen on todays tour include: Northern Gannet, Atlantic Puffin, Northern Fulmar, Arctic Skua, Common Guillemot, Razorbill, Kittiwake.