Tuesday, 6 June 2023

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00, 12:00, 14:00 and 20:00 Premium Whale tours and on our lovely vessel Eldey and Elding for the 09:00, 10:00, 13:00 and 17:00 Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land. 

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 12:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 17:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 20:00

Report from Eldey: We set sail on a new day in search of more cetaceans. It was a cloudy morning but the seas were fairly calm with no white caps. After sailing out for a bit we saw a minke whale and it really stank of fish! It truly was a stinky minke but unfortunately we only saw this minke once before it disappeared. We then saw another and the same thing happened. But our luck was about to change. We saw a blow in front of us, this belonged to a humpback whale. After seeing this we then saw another 3-4 blows each from a different humpback. In total we saw 6-8 humpbacks during this tour. It was really special to see so many and so many fluke dives. After seeing them for a bit we headed off to see if we could see anything else. We found a small pod of white beaked dolphins. They were so cute! It was a pod of 5 which included 2 mothers with a calf and juvenile. The little ones were jumping out the water bringing a smile to everyone's face. It was a really great tour.

- Rob Hyman

Report from Elding: We sailed from Reykjavik harbour in a cloudy day. We had a comfortable tour with not many passengers. As we were heading out we could spot a shy pod of 4 white beaked dolphins. We could see them for a bit but they were very unpredictable so we decided to continue. We saw a blow far in the distance and when we got closer we realized it was a humpback. It was also acting elusively so it took us a while to see it properly. After that, we decided to head back and on the way we found another humpback and this one was way more entertaining to see! We saw the fluke few times so people got quite excited. We saw two humpback whales in total. There were also two very quick minke whales in the distance.

- Nicolás Corral

Report from Eldey: The weather was cloudy and cold, so proper Icelandic summer weather. We sailed out with a light swell and some strong wind but it was still a pleasant cruise. After sailing for what felt like a long time we spotted our first blow on the horizon. It was the blow of a humpback whale. We tried to get a close glimpse of this animals but it was tricky, it kept going for long deep dives and changed directions. Luckily there were 2 other humpbacks in the vicinity of which one slapped its tail on the surface once. Of these two we were able to see one from much closer and see if fluke up multiple times. In between the humpback sightings we also found two lonely white-beaked dolphins that just came up and vanished very quickly and later on we found an entire pod (6-8) of them with one juvenile dolphin. How cute! Happily we sailed home and the sun even came out and the wind settled. Lovely tour!

- Cindy Schwenk

Report from Eldey: It was quite a bit colder this evening but this didn't stop us as we wanted to carry on our great day of whale watching. We sailed out and after about an hour we spotted a blow. We got closer to this fairly elusive humpback whale. It was moving very slowly but going for long, deep dives after showing us it's beautiful fluke. We had seen many other blows during this sighting from other humpbacks so we went to find more. They all seemed to be elusive and taking long dives. As soon as we found one it would then disappear. We struggled like this for around 20 minutes with tricky humpbacks. But we were then rewarded finding another one which even came quite close to the boat! We could see the white pectoral fins through the water before it showed us it's fluke. We then saw a minke whale and a harbour porpoise on our journey home as well. It was a tour full of cetaceans!

- Rob Hyman

Northern gannets, Atlantic puffin, northern fulmar, eider duck, lesser black-backed gull, great black-backed gull, black- headed gull, herring gull, black-legged kittiwake, black guillemot and common guillemot.