Wednesday, 03 September 2014

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: it was raining a lot in Reykjavík when we headed out this evening but it cleared up when we got further away on the bay. We headed straight to the area where we had seen the minke whales in the afternoon tour. Just right after we slowed down in the area we saw the first minke whale of the tour with many more to come. The sea was so flat it looked like a mirror and it was bright because of the cloudy sky so it was very easy to spot the dark bodies of the whales coming up for air even in far distance. For some time we were just surrounded by minke whales and over all we had about 7-8 different individuals! This tour was amazing, not only because of the beautiful animals but also because of the fantastic weather and landscape around us.

- Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: the wind was getting down this afternoon but we got a little rain on us every now and then in the tour but we of course did not let that stop us in the searching for the cetaceans. The first species of the tour was a group of 4-5 harbor porpoises, often these animals are very shy and hard to spot but these porpoises where quite friendly and we got a good sighting of these small and cute cetaceans. We kept on going and got to amazing area where we got incredible sightings ofminke whales! Few times we had minke whales all around us, both far away and close to us and sometimes even closer than 80 meters away! Over all we had about 5-6 minke whales in this breathtaking tour!

- Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: it was cloudy, little chilly but the wind went easy on us on this morning tour.  It took us about one hour so spot the first cetacean of the tour, a group of 3-4 white-beaked dolphins. It was a little difficult to follow them because they were spending a long time under water but lucky for us we soon spotted another group of dolphins not so far from the other one. This group was much bigger, about 8-9 individuals and they were much friendlier. These dolphins came frequently up to the surface and repeatedly came towards us and even going under the boat few times.  It is always so nice to get these beautiful animals so close to us because it is quite easy to spot them under water because of their white stripes on their body. We kept on going further out in hope to see another species but only to find more groups of dolphins which was of course lovely. So over all we enjoyed 3-4 groups of dolphins on the tour.

- Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Birds seen on today's tours include: Lesser black-backed gulls, black headed gulls, eider ducks, whooper swans, fulmars, northern gannets, razorbill, manx shearwaters, and arctic terns.