Wednesday, 02 April 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: After a good morning we headed back out into what turned out to be a much livelier Faxaflói in the afternoon. It started much like the previous tour with a few brief White-Beaked Dolphin and Harbour Porpoise sightings but after sailing further out turned much more active. We headed for the same area that we had seen the last tours whales and we found the same two Humpback Whales but they were also joined by at least 4 Minke Whales! We concentrated on the humpbacks while the minkes were surfacing around us in every direction, and the humpbacks put on a bit of a show this time! They were fluking much more frequently, one of the whales even threw its entire tail, rear body and some of its torso out of the water as it went for a dive. It was a truly beautiful thing to see! And then just as we started to head back one of the humpbacks surfaced beside us and did a 360 degree roll, throwing its pectoral fins into the air as it did! It was a goodbye that the entire tour was mesmerised to witness. It was a tour that was well and truly excellent.

- Jack Ball

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: Judging by the success of previous days we were very confident heading out on todays tour. Were we overconfident though? Certainly not. Sailing from Reykjavík it took only around 45 minutes before some pointy dorsal fins were spotted on the horizon, these belonged to some White-Beaked Dolphins! During the tour we actually came across 3 groups of dolphins, though we weren´t sure if they were the same individuals seen again. But they acted different from each other, the first group disappeared quite quickly and it was the second that were the best. They were very calm around the boat and were swimming around us slowly, actually allowing us to get some pictures of the normally elusive species! And after we moved on we found a pair of Humpback Whales feeding together, they were typically calm and made for a very nice last sighting of the day.

- Jack Ball

Birds seen on todays tour include: Northern Gannet, Northern Fulmar, Eider Duck, Kittiwake, Black-Backed Gull, Glaucous Gull.