Wednesday, 17 May 2023

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00 and 14:00 Premium Whale tours and on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00, 1300 and 17:00 Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land. 

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00    
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00 
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00  
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 17:00

COVID-19: Keep in mind that passengers and crew are asked to ensure their own hygiene and safety at all times. Washing hands thoroughly with soap and using a hand sanitiser is advised.  

Report from Eldey: What a lovely Icelandic day this is! A very bright day with just a bit of wind and a tad of swell, but it´s not really that cold today. We had a good contrast of the sea and we could see the whale and dolphin´s body easily. After almost an hour we had our first sighting, a pod of white beaked dolphins with some birds on the surface. We were full of hope for something else and five minutes later 1 humpback whale blew a really big breath to the air and we could see it very clearly. The whale was joined by the dolphins and together they fed on the food underwater. It was a bit hard to take a nice picture of this whale because it kept coming up in different places. At least we had the dolphins always showing up to greet us! After one hour and many fluke dives our captain called it a day.

- Pedro Teixeira

Report from Eldey: We headed out in the afternoon tour on much calmer seas. It was much flatter due to the reduced wind. This gave us a very enjoyable outward journey as we headed past many Atlantic puffins and black guillemots. After around 45 minutes of travelling we started to see blows in the distance in front of us. As we caught up to the blows a minke whale appeared on our right hand side. This would be our companion for the next 15 minutes. It was even joined by another minke feeding in the same area. The blows we had spotted belonged to 4 humpback whales. 2 of these were a pair and even came right up to the back of our boat very close. The others were solitary. But all of these individuals of the 2 baleen species were likely feeding on the same fish as many seabirds around us too. One of the solitary humpbacks even gave us 2 peduncle throws towards the end of the sighting, this was so cool! On our way back home we also passed a 3rd minke whale. This was a really great tour full of cetaceans.

- Rob Hyman

Report from Eldey: We start our evening tour with some fresh cold air coming from the sea and bit of swell, but nothing could stop us! We could see a sighting from very far away with the way the sea and the sky were. With northern fulmars, puffins and some kittiwakes telling us where to go, we decided to follow them to a huge flock of birds that was behaving like a tornado! While we were passing by that nature phenomenon, a minke whale came really close to the boat and caught us by surprise. It was so close that we could see the white stripes on its flippers! Right after that, we saw 2 blows not too far away, a sign of the presence of 2 humpback whales, that were also feeding in the middle of another "bird tornado". Also, another humpback whale was tail slapping and making a lot of splashes, so we had 3! We stayed for a while with the first 2, they gave us a very good glimpse of fluke dives and lunge feeding, very nice behaved whales! Also good timekeepers because they kept coming up at around the same time. The wind started to pick up and the time was up, so we slowly started to head back to the Reykjavík harbour after a good day on the Faxaflói bay!

- Pedro Teixeira  

Atlantic puffin, Arctic skua, northern gannet, northern fulmar, black legged kittiwake, black guillemot, common guillemot, Arctic tern, eider duck, great black backed gull, common gull, herring gull, icelandic gull and razorbill.