Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The wind had picked up a bit since the morning tour and some rain showers passed over us. We headed straight for the area where we left the humpback whale this morning, but it was nowhere to be seen. We continued out in Faxafloí bay and after a while some of our passengers spotted something infront of the boat. It turned out to be a single white-beaked dolphin, it didn´t surface again infront of the boat instead we found it jumping in the swells behind the boat! A few jumps out of the water and then the dolphin continued traveling away from us. We headed further out in the bay and came to an area with feeding birds. A minke whale was seen surfacing twice in the distance but unfortenatly most of our passenger missed it. A pod of white-beaked dolphins were feeding underneath a flock of birds and gave us very nice views! On the journey home we got a call from another whale watching boat about a minke whale, but when we arrived the minke was gone. Instead 2-3 harbour porpoises had to end this tour, as we were running out of time. 

- Marcus Bergström

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We left from Reykjavik harbour and started to head out towards the areas that have proven good the last two days. The bad weather during the night had moved on and we were faced with a partly cloudy sky and no rain. The swells had also calmed down and overall it was a pleasent ride in the beginning. Our first cetacean for the day was a minke whale we recognized from previous years. The minke is called Peanut and it have been seen in Faxafloí bay since 2007, last year Peanut was seen on 24 of our tours and was last seen on September 27th. We remained in the area and Peanut kept us company for a while and at one point surfaced only 40 m away from the boat. There was at least one other minke whale seen in the same area and a lot of feeding seabirds! We had to leave the area and start heading back to Reykjavik, but on our way we noticed a huge blow fairly close to the boat and soon a humpback whale surfaced infront of us! We followed the humpback for a while because it was traveling the same direction as we. A great ending of a beautiful morning tour!  

- Marcus Bergström

Birds seen on todays tour include: Black-backed gulls, iceland gulls, glaucous gulls, european shags, eider ducks, northern fulmars, northern gannets, long-tailed ducks and kittiwakes.