WEDNESDAY, 18 MAY 2016

Status: RUNNING

Its partially clouded today, and a little cold, but we are sailing out from Reykjavik Harbour in good spirits, with warm overalls onboard to keep the cold away! 

For more information, please contact our ticket office at +354 519 5000 or elding@elding.is

Tour at 17:00

Report from Elding: The weather had improved during the day so that we had to deal with less and less wind on this tour, the sky cleared up and let the sun shine through the clouds. After an hour of comfortable sailing out we saw first 2-3 harbour porpoises and just a few seconds later also a minke whale in front of us. This minke gave as an amazing time. It always came up in different directions but it stayed in the same area and didn't seem to care about us. Since there was also a small flock of feeding birds around and we could see fish underneath the boat on the fish finder, it may have been feeding. For a minke whale, we were able to spent a good while with it as it just popped up all around us. Then a passenger said that she saw a blow of a whale in some distance, therefore we decided to leave this minke and look for something else, maybe to find the humpback whale from the previous tours. We kept searching but instead of the humpback came across a pod of 10 white-beaked dolphins. They just minded their own business and kept a constant direction parallel to us so that we could observe them perfectly. Since another whale watching boat arrived in this area after some time, we left the dolphins and moved on. Before we ran out of time we got to see another minke whale, however, it kept a greater distance to us than its conspecific encountered earlier. Overall, a very nice and relaxing evening whale watching tour with lots to see! :-)

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: We headed out into the bay on a quiet sea and with little wind. It didn´t take us long to reach an area where a large flock of seabirds were feeding. Together with some elusive harbour porpoises they were obvious signs of a large school of fish surrounding the boat. Hoping that a whale will soon join the feast we very soon spotted a blow a kilometer ahead of our boat. The closer we would get to the site of the blow the higher the number of seabirds and porpoises was. In the middle of the frenzy a large humpback whale soon surfaced. The animal was quickly followed by the brief appearance of a smaller minke whale, but this individual was very elusive and most of the passengers didn´t see it. However the humpback whale was obviously not bothered by us, foraging around us for almost an hour it would sometimes surface very close to the boat. Porpoises tried to steal the show several times by showing up very often next to the large humpback whale or the boat. When we finally had to come back to Reykjavík the whale was still quietly feeding.

- Rémi Bigonneau

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey and Elding: Due to high passenger numbers we decided to take two boats out. We headed out on a slightly chilly day, however, the sea was beautifully calm and there was very little wind so it was a very comfortable sail out into the bay. Once further out in the bay a juvenile minke whale was spotted by Eldey, it came up a few times but was very quick so not everyone was able to get a perfect view of this animal. As this minke was being a bit elusive we headed out further into the bay where another larger minke was spotted, this animal was a lot more relaxed around our presence and so we were rewarded with a lovely surface sequence. Elding saw 2-3 harbour porpoises on the way out and then also had a look at the small minke whale before moving on and a passenger spotted another minke whale which was a bit elusive. Therefore, Elding moved on again and tried to find more cetaceans further out in the Bay. After a while, Elding spotted a big blow in front of them which turned out to belong to a humpback whale. It surfaced a few times very close to the boat, before we left it to make space for other boats like Eldey to also get a look at it. After this nice encounter the boats headed back to Reykjavík Harbour. 

- Tess Hudson & Hanna Michel

Bird species seen on todays tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, manx shearwater, arctic skua, lesser black-backed gull, greater black-backed gull, black-headed gull, kittiwake, razorbill, common guillemot, puffin, arctic tern and eider duck.