WEDNESDAY, 16 MARCH 2016

Status: RUNNING

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: An incredible tour this afternoon. The weather wasn't so bad although we experienced some winds and swells. We didn't have to sail for long for our first sightings of the tour and to our pleasant surprise it was a pod of killer whales, eight individuals!!! We really couldn't believe this and everybody on board were screaming out of happiness. The pod included one male, five females and two calves. The orcas were traveling pretty fast but they came really close to our boat several times and we stayed with the group for a while before we headed further out into the bay. We wanted to try our luck even more and sailed out to find the humpback whales we had encountered on our morning tour. When we reached the area we were earlier in the morning we noticed there was a lot of fish and birdlife. At first we only saw one pod of white-beaked dolphins, maybe 5 individuals, but this pod was very elusive so we went on. After only few minutes we encountered another pod and then another. In the end we had spotted at least 5 pods of dolphins and probably 40-50 individuals. This was just incredible and we could see the dolphins and the birds feeding on a fish load on the surface of the water. To make this tour even better a humpback whale showed up all of a sudden to all of our surprise. This individual was very calm and stayed with us for a long time so everybody had a good look at it. It even showed us it's dark fluke in the end of the tour and this was when we decided we were satisfied with everything and went on back to Reykjavík. Truly an amazing tour that doesn't happen every day. 

-Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: It was windy this morning but the sea conditions were better than yesterday. After about an hour we saw two humpback whales traveling together! They were really relaxed and stayed always close to the surface so it was easy to follow them around even under water. They clearly did not mind our boat and few times came towards us and at one point they surfaced right next to us! It was easy to photograph them when they rested for few seconds on the surface. We also saw other behavior like spy hopping, rolling and tail slapping. After an awesome time with these two humpbacks we saw 13-15 white beaked dolphins. It was a bit more challenging photograph them as they always kept changing direction. 

-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Birds seen on the tours: Northern fulmar, northern gannet, great black backed gull, glaucous gull, iceland gull, whooper swans, long tailed ducks, eider ducks and shags.