WEDNESDAY, 29 JULY 2015

Tour at 20:30 

Report from Hafsúlan: A tour unlike any other, a dream lived. A long but beautiful sail offshore. The sun lowered in the sky shining light on Snæfellsjökull 120km away. As the sun set the skies changed into many beautiful colours and the clouds changed with it. It really couldn't get better but it did. We found a humpback whale after about 1 1/2 hours sailing to the areas where the rib boats had encountered a humpback whale earlier. As we approached about 500 meters away the humpback whale breached twice and the half breached and then as we manuevered the boat to have the sunset behind it started tail lobbing, slapping, fluking and just being an awesome whale. As we started to travel home it followed, travelling side by side. A perfect night with the midnight sun, the incredible humpback whale doing awesome stuff in the midnight sun and the amazing and talented vocals and comedy act of Bjarni, whom also brought a friend along to do a bit with a harmonica. A wonderful, not to miss midnight whale watching tour. 

- Megan Whittaker

Tour at 17:00 

Report from Hafsúlan: A pleasurable south easterly wind was blowing behind us as we made our way out in to Faxaflói bay. With all the passengers well versed in spotting cetaceans we were ready to see some wildlife. Only about 20 minutes in to our journey we spotted the first of three minke whale which was a small individual. We only stayed with this individual for a few surfaces because we soon spotted another much larger minke about 300 meters behind the boat. These minkes were quite nice to us and made sure all the passengers had great views. Having spotted some breaching white beaked dolphins. This pod had 6 individuals but before long we had a second pod of 10 dolphins join them. They all started leaping and breaching showing us why they are my favorite animals to see. It was an awesome sight and the dolphins stayed with us until we had to turn back. As we made our way back we passed our third minke whale who came really close to us showing its beautiful fin. I have to give a shout out to one of the passengers named Elliott he was an awesome co-guide and helped us out a lot. Another awesome evening tour!

-Tommy Torrades

Tour at 14:00

Report from Eldey: The wind had picked up a little bit from this morning but the sea conditions were still perfect. We sailed out from Reykjavík with the sunshine in our faces. We had to sail for a while before we found our first minke whale. This turned out to be a minke day as we only encountered minke whales, but quite many of them which was great. We had some really good sightings of one individual but it was travelling pretty fast so it was hard to keep a track of him. After a while we decided to take a little circle in the bay to try and find some other species but the luck wasn't on our side. But that didn't matter because the minke whales were really amazing. Another solid tour with Elding.

- Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 13:00 

Report from Hafsúlan: Luck was still on our side when we went out again in the afternoon in those still perfect weather conditions. We went straight out into the area where we had several encounters in the morning tour. Indeed, just a short trip later we spotted the first cetaceans of this tour, another minke whale. This individual seemed rather busy, moving around very fast while it was feeding on the abundance of fish in the area.We followed it for a while until we spotted another minke whale as well as a group of white- beaked dolphins jumping in the distance. These animals put on quiet a show for us after they took their time to check out both of the boat that where watching them. On the rest of the tour we encountered another smaller pod of dolphins as well as a third minke whale on our way back to the harbour in Reykjavik.
Estimating 3 minke whales and 8 white- beaked dolphins.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Tour at 10:00

Report from Eldey: This was a beautiful morning and the sea conditions were just perfect, a totally flat sea so it was washy for us to spot the animals. We didn't have to sail for long until we spotted a minke whale. This individual was really great, surfacing quite frequently so we could stay a while. After a while more minke whales showed up so we had one at the front of the boat and another at the back. We also spotted two pods of harbour porpoises. Both of those pods were not elusive at all, they really came close to the boat and at one time they were leaping only few meters from the boat.After about an hour with these animals we decided to head a little bit further south. We encountered a pod of white-beaked dolphins. They didn't seem to mind us at all and came really close to the boat, we could even see them swimming under the surface, so beautiful creatures. On our way back the sun really warmed us up, no overalls today. 

- Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 09:00 

Report from Hafsúlan: Our morning tour started out with the most beautiful, sunny weather. This was perfect for whale watching, calm sea and white clouds reflecting on the water surface. We started heading west straight away, while we were enjoying the nice few of Icelands beautiful landscape. It didn't take long until we encountered our first cetacean, a minke whale. Right after we spotted this animal in the distance, we sighted another one only a few hundred meters infront of the boat. This was not the end of it, we saw several more minke whales in the rest of our tour and even spotted two pods of white- beaked dolphins. One pod with two individuals was rather elusive, but the other larger one with at least 4 dolphins gave us some good opportunities for a nice look at them, until we had to turn around and head back home. 
Estimating 5-9 minke whales and at least 6 white- beaked dolphins.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, arctic terns, black-backed gulls, atlantic puffins, arctic skuas, common guillemots and eider ducks.