Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: A tour full of minke whales in the evening! We went out from Reykjavík again in these awesome sea conditions and were sure to find a few minke whales again. And we were right, after about 45 min we spotted the first minke whale and spent some time with it. Shortly after we moved on to look for something else another minke whales surfaced in the same area. After a while, we decided to look for some white-beaked dolphins, but instead we found at least four more minke whales on this tour. In the end, we had at least three individuals feeding around our boat, and one of them was even rolling over and showing its belly. A great tour to end the day with! 

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: The sea conditions were really good on this tour for whale watching, the sea was smooth and it was easy to spot the animals. We spotted one or two white-beaked dolphins after maybe 40 minutes of sailing. The were pretty elusive and didn't show off for us so we moved on to another spot. It didn't take long for us to spot a minke whale. We stayed at that area for some time and by the end of the tour we had seen at least 4 minke whales on our way. It was a good tour, the conditions were perfect and the weather was really good.  

- Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The weather and sea conditions on this tour were just perfect for whale watching. The sea was totally smooth and the swell had calmed down since this morning. It didn't take long until we spotted a pod of 4-5 white-beaked dolphins traveling in front of and next to our boat. In these great conditions they were easy to spot and it was so easy to take pictures of them, that we decided to move on to find a minke whale. And after a while we indeed found a minke whale called Shark, that was first seen in Faxaflói in 2007. It was slowly moving in an area and surfaced in front of the mountain ranges multiple times. As we kept searching for more cetaceans, we spotted another small pod of 2-3 white-beaked dolphins and, after that, two more minke whales, one of them quite close to the harbour. The perfect end of this great tour.  

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: We went out from Reykjavík harbour. The sea conditions were pretty good so we didn't have much sea sickness on board. After some time of scanning the area we spotted a minke whale that we could identify as Spider, a whale that we have been seeing regularly since 2010. We spotted a pod of white-beaked dolphins, 4-5 individuals that were traveling in a group. Passengers could get a good look at the pod, they were jumping out of the water and it wasn't long until another pod of dolphins joined us. After the passengers had taken their photos of the dolphins we started to head back to Reykjavík. On our way to Reykjavík we spotted few harbour porpoises, 2-3 individuals, near the puffin colonies on Akurey and Engey. They were quite shy and elusive but it was still good to see these three species on one tour. 

-Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 9:00

Report from Hafsúlan: This morning the weather in the Faxaflói bay was especially good, barely any wind at all. This gave the opportunity for very good whale watching conditions. Just after a short trip we encountered a pod of white- beaked dolphins, which were milling, jumping, feeding and traveling. We counted at least 7 individuals, with 2 dolphins further away constantly jumping. During the rest of the tour we also spotted 4-5 different minke whales. Three of those whales were identified right away as Flickr, Shark and Spider. These animals didn´t seem to be disturbed by the boats, which gave us some very close up encounters and picture - worth situations. Unfortunately we had to go back to the harbour at some point and had to said goodbye to them.

- Michalea Buchbauer

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmars, puffins, manx shearwaters, razorbills, black- backed gulls, common guillemots, eider ducks, skuas and kittiwakes.