Tour at 20:30
With a stiff wind and a cautious Captain, we headed straight out into Faxaflói Bay, heading north towards all of the action on the previous tours. The Bay was full of birds, 10's of thousands of birds everywhere. Surely there was bound to be whales and soon we found ourselves right next to a large Minke Whale. This whale was a very big Minke whale around 11 meters in length and also very exciting, swimming very fast and lunge feeding. After a little time passed we left this one to let it eat in private. We then headed a little further out, still with birds galore. All of a sudden, SPLASH! Minke! This time it was a mother with a younger calf (adolescent). There was a ton of fish in the area, as proved by the on board sonar, feeding birds and the lunge feeding by the whales. Before long we were surrounded by Minkes in every direction all of them going crazy eating. It was so exciting! We spent the rest of our time out in nearly the same spot with several minke whales jumping, rolling, lunging and showing their baleen plates. On our way back in the sun came out and gave us an amazing sun set. We ended our tour at Akurey taking in the wonder of the puffin. Amazing trip, so exciting!
Tour at 17:00
On this tour we started at the Puffin island Lundey, Then Faxaflói bay. But on this tour we were sailing very close to land, close to Kjalarnes. This area is not our usual whale watching area. And like the whole day, lots of Minke Whales. We spotted at least 5-6 animals which we could have a good look at. Many of the whales were coming up underneath the birds, which is always fun to watch.
Tour at 14:00
The wind calmed down slightly but it did rain for a short time for this tour. Once again we started at Akurey and there were thousands of Puffins. Then we sailed out into Faxaflói and round ourselves surrounded by Minke Whales. It was a Minke Whale clock. 1 o´clock 2 o´clock, 3 o´clock a whale, 4 o´clock, 5 o´clock, 6 o´clock a whale. It was amazing. We must of stayed in the exact same place for about 20 minutes just watching the whales surface all around us. I even gave up telling the passengers where to look. There was one Minke that quickly changed direction and you could see the fluke prints on the surface of the water going in a circle, so you could tell that the Minke was encircling fish then suddenly LUNGE!! There was so much surface feeding today, a behaviour that has only really be observed in that last couple of weeks. Fantastic tour.
Tour at 13:00
We started this tour at the puffin island Lundey. Very close to the island some thing strange happened. A Minke Whale surfaced 30 m. in front of the boat. We couldn’t believe our eyes. What a beginning on a great tour. Lots of Puffins on the island and a Minke Whale surfacing close to it. In the same aria as this morning, a little bit further out in the bay, we found a lot of Minke Whales. Sometimes it was difficult to know where to look, because they were all around us, lunge feeding and surfacing many times. One time, two whales were swimming side by side for some time, very interesting. We had a lot of good opportunities to watch them up close. Very nice tour.
Tour at 10.00
The weather was actually very nice. Hardly no wind so a flat sea, very overcast but very good visibility. We started the tour by visiting Akurey and again there were swarms of Puffins, most with fish in their bills to feed to their chicks. As we sailed away from the Island we could see small scattered flocks of birds as far as the eye could see. So this looks very promising for the tour. There were Minkes everywhere showing a lot of surface feeding behaviour, rolling, lunge feeding it was amazing to see Faxaflói so productive. We went from Minke to Minke, some surfacing less than 50 meters from our boat. After having such a great start to the tour we thought that we would do a sweep of Faxaflói to see if we could see any other species. We saw some birds sitting on the waters surface, Gannets, Razorbills, Kittiwakes, Fulmars and Gulls. As we got closer a Harbour Porpoise shot under the boat and wasn´t spotted again. As we headed back to the harbour we saw two Minke Whales surface feeding so we watched those for a while. Absolutely amazing day.
Tour at 09:00
Wonderful weather like all the last days. Very soon after we left the harbor we spotted our first Minke Whale. Like in the last few days they were very close to shore. We spent most of our time in the same area, because there were many Minke Whales there. Lot of birds feeding and Minke Whales lunge feeding, coming up between the birds. So this tour was very successful, with many interesting sightings. We ended this great tour by visiting the Puffin island Lundey.