Tuesday, 8 March 2015

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: It had cleared up since the morning tour and we could enjoy sunshine and good weather during the whole tour. We knew since the morning tour that the whales were far out in the bay today so we prepared for sailing for a long time. We could enjoy the beautiful landscape while we continued forward and one pod of 4-5 harbour porpoises passed us by quickly. When we reached the area we slowed down and started looking out for blows. Soon we spotted out first blow from a whale and we soon realized that it was at least 3-4 humpback whales in the area. Suddenly two whales surfaced right next to us, this was a mother and a calf! It is very rarely that we get to observe a cow (whale) with a calf so we enjoyed every second when we followed these gentle giants! The calf was maybe 8 meters long and tried to keep up with its mother. When the female went for deeper dives the calf stayed at the surface checking us out and coming really close to the boat. These two have probably just returned from the breeding grounds in warm tropical waters and are now here to exploit the abundance of food during the summer half year. Amazing to see and I think we all became very fond of this pair of humpbacks. Join us tomorrow for more whale watching! 

- Marcus Bergström  

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: The visibility over the bay was not good with low and thick clouds over the bay but the sea conditions were almost perfect with little swell and no breaking waves. We had to sail for a long time before we found signs of cetaceans. We spotted a blow at least one and a half kilometer away. When we finally got closer to the animal in started to be very elusive. When we saw it again it had traveled a long distance away but was close enough to identify it as a humpback whale. We soon realized there were two humpbacks in the area but both spent a long time underwater. We chased them for a long time and right before we had to turned around and travel back to Reykjavík we finally got a good look at one of them when it went for a dive so we all got to see its fluke. On our way back we saw three other humpbacks and two of them within 300 meters away from the boat so those were our best sightings. 

-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Bird species seen on todays tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, "blue fulmar", Iceland gull, herring gull, black guillemot, razorbill and eider duck.