WEDNESDAY, 13 APRIL 2016

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: The afternoon was still fairly warm but now it had clouded over completely but we still had a beautifully calm sea. After sailing for only 15 minutes our first species was spotted, a pod of 8 white beaked dolphin. A few more pods then surfaced about 400 meters away in almost every direction. We had a good look at the closest pod, which surfaced really close to the boat and everyone was able to get a really good look at these individuals. It was then time to move on and find a new species and a humpback whale surfaced about a kilometer away so we headed towards it and watched as it raised its lovely fluke signaling a deeper dive. This animal then surfaced a few more times occasionally going for deeper dives and raising its fluke. Another humpback was spotted as it raised its fluke going for a deeper dive only 150 meters away. We then observed these animals for a time then moved off to find some more animals. After a short search we found many more pods of white beaked dolphin, which came so close to the boat you could see them swimming underneath the waters surface. A really amazing experience with so many dolphins to see. 

-Tess

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: A magical morning out in the bay. The sea was so flat so it was difficult to see where the sea ended in the horizon and the sky continued. Flat sea and sunshine gave us again the best spotting conditions. We soon could see that the bay was full of harbour porpoises, they surfaced all around us during the whole tour. It must have been 50-100 individuals at least, spread around in a very large area. Our first larger cetacean was a minke whale that we could stay with for a while. During the tour we had 3-4 minke whales. The highlight of the tour was a pair of humpback whales that were slowly traveling together. They stayed so close to the surface and moved so slowly that we got so good views of this pair of gentle giants. From time to time we got to see some rolling around at the surface and even showing the pectoral fins (arms of a whale). Two deeper dives could be seen with their flukes raised high up! An amazing encounter in the sun. We ended the tour with 3-4 pods of white-beaked dolphins. All together maybe 50 individuals. Some of the dolphins joined us in the travel back to harbour riding the waves that our boat made behind us. This was a great tour with 4 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises!

- Marcus Bergström

Bird species seen on todays tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, "blue fulmar", glaucous gull, Iceland gull, lesser black-backed gull, kittiwake, puffin, grayleg goose, great skua and eider duck.