Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: The conditions we saw in the afternoon had calmed down a lot, swell height was low and visibility was great! Moving towards our main sighting area we spotted some water splashes from a distance, which was later confirmed by one of the RIBs of Whale Safari to be breaching and tail lobbing exhibited by a humpback whale. While we were on our way to get closer to the humback, we spotted a minke whale just passing right in front of us. The minke was however not seen again and we prioritised the humpback whale. As we got closer to where the humpback was seen we had to wait for a few minutes. When we spotted the first blow, we actually saw another blow and recognised a second humpback whale. These guys were surfacing a couple of times and going for longer dives afterwards. They repeated this behaviour and we could stay for a while, spotting them everytime they returned from a longer dive. Towards the end of the trip, we had a good half hour where the humpbacks were surfacing as close as 10m away from the boat and diving in between our boat and the other whale watching vessel Andrea. The passengers were ecstatic and the humpbacks sometimes even surfaced head first, seemingly checking us out. This was not just a special moment for the passengers, but for the crew likewise and we hope for many more trips like this one!
- Friedrich Rittner
Tour at 14:00
Report from Hafsúlan: We could already feel the cooler icelandic wind once we started to move out of the harbour, but the sun was still shining and made it pleasant. On our way out, we had a quick glimpse of a minke whale, which was travelling very quickly and didn't appear again. Instead of chasing it, we kept going. First we spottted a group of 4 white-beaked dolphins, of which one was clearly a calf. They came to check the boat out for just a few minutes but then suddenly decided to turn away and leave us. So we kept going - only to find a humpback whale. The first surface sequence ended with a nice showing of it's fluke. Later it even came within 200m of the boat and satyed on the surface for more than a minute before doing a super slow-motion dive, so that everyone could got the chance to take great photos!
-Sabrina Voswinkel
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: In the afternoon northern wind became stronger but with shining sun we still were able to enjoy sailing. Today the air is so clear that we had perfect view for both peninsulas: we could see Keflavik at the end of Reykjanes and stunning glacier&volcano Snæfellsjökull at Snæfellsnes. It take us a bit longer then usually before we found a whale. Few times we had stop to look around when we spotted a blows, what ended as a false alarms but finally we got a chance to see a Humpback Whale! We needed to be patient with this individual because was taking long brakes between surfacing but couple times we were happy to take a look at a whale fluke. On this tour we saw also few harbour porpoises swimming close to our boat but only few lucky passengers had chance to see them. On the way back we enjoyed panoramic view for city of Reykjavik and of course had a chance to see many Puffins and other interesting sea birds.
Tour at 10:00
Report from Hafsúlan: It was quite chilly when we left the port today, with the wind conditions staying mostly constant. The visibility however was amazing, allowing us to get a perfect view of Snæfellsjoküll in the north-west of the bay. We had to travel quite far before we caught our first glimpse of a minke whale which was heralded by the presence of a huge flock of seabirds. Unfortunately that minke didn't really feel like sticking around, but we were joined by some friendly harbour porpoises as we left the area. After moving back a bit further in to the bay, we once again caught sight of a big flock of birds. This time, we were lucky, and we got to see the minke lunge-feed a few times before it started travelling with the boat. At one point we had harbour porpoises and the minke with us at the same time! The encounter lasted a long time and the whale came within 25 metres of the boat, which felt like a rewarding end to the trip after the elusive minke from before. We returned to the harbour with huge smiles on our faces!
-Rachel Pool
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: On our way out we had good conditions with some sun and small to medium swell height. The wind picked up towards the end of the cruise, however it stayed dry and visibility was good throughout the trip. About 45 minutes into our trip we spotted a small to medium sized flock of arctic terns, which led us to a pod of about 4 - 5 white-beaked dolphins. We also spotted maybe 2 - 3 harbour porpoises among these dolphins and assumed some form of interaction between these two species. They came up moving quickly and after swimming towards us, they changed direction away from us and swam towards the whale fjord. In our pursuit to continue our sighting of this group of animals, we were met by a minke whale, which suddenly popped up in the midst of the pod of dolphins. The minke whale became our priority and in attempt to get a better sighting we circled around the main sighting area as well as the spots we had last seen it. With only a few surfaces and a little bit of a hide and seek game with the minke, we were slowly running out of time. Luckily for us, just about 5 minutes before we had to return, we had the minke pop up between 50 and 100m from the boat and a second minke was also spotted. These two minkes surfaced a couple of times, easy to spot for all the passengers. The trip was a success and we enjoyed the slightly windy journey back to the harbour.
- Friedrich Rittner
Bird seen today iclude: atlantic puffin, common guillemot, black guillemot, arctic skua, great skua, northern fulmar, northern gannet, manx sharewater, kittiwake, lesser black backed gull, great back backed gull, glaucous gull, arctic tern, eider duck
