Tuesday, 5 March 2024

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 9:00, 13:00

Report from Eldey: our beautiful morning tour was a bit windy, but we prepared ourselves with our overalls and we were ready to go! Although we had some wind, the sea wasn't choppy, the waves were very short and we had few white caps. Our first encounter was about 10min after we set sail, spotting a back of a humpback whale in the distance! We got closer to it and we realized Frodo was around, showing off a beautiful fluke for us in between rests. At one point it stopped logging and it was coming very unpredictably, sometimes even right next to our boat! As we saw there were another boats coming, we decided to travel a bit and try to spot something else, as we saw a pod of 5 harbour porpoises passing by. Their surfacing were quite predictable and we could even see then surfing with the swell! Not far from the porpoises, there was a blow that we went to check it out. It was another humpback whale, this time Pongo! Such a nice sighting seeing a back-spotted whale. We decided to check out Frodo again, and this time it was very close to the shore of Videy island, and leading us to Skafabakki harbour. We enjoyed this very productive area for a while, watching Frodo and the great amount of seabirds around, before realizing we were running out of time and coming back home.

- Milla Brandao

Report from Eldey: This afternoon we sailed out into the wind once more. The swell was a bit choppy but as we were lucky in the mornng tour to stay close to harbour we tried this technique again! It took us only 10min of sailing to find our first whale namely a humpback whale! This was Frodo once more, she came extremely close to our ship and was probably busy feeding as she often changed direction and didn't spend too much time at the surface. After some time together, we headed further out to see what else the bay had on offer. On our little tour we didnt find any other cetaceans so circled back to see Frodo once more before heading back and as we approached she breached twice! We hung around a little bit longer to see if she was feeling more social, however she calmed back down but again came extremely close to our boat. When time was up, we headed back to harbour.

- Anna Richter

razorbills, common and black guillemots, great cormorants, Northern fulmars, Northern gannets, eider ducks, herring gulls, black backed gulls, black footed kittiwakes, glaucous gulls, Iceland gulls, common loon