Wednesday, 30 March 2022

Today we will be operating on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00 and 13:00 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
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00

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: Although there weren´t a lot of seabirds flying around, we encountered many cetaceans during this morning´s tour. First, we spotted a pod of three harbour porpoises surfacing next to our boat for about a minute. Second, we saw a minke whale who was surfacing rather unpredictably and taking long dives. We tried to stay with this whale but after a while we decided to explore another area, where we found another minke whale. This individual came a lot closer to us, allowing us to get a better look at this beautiful whale species. After our interactions with the calm minke whales, we sailed towards a much more playful group of dolphins. There were about 15-20 white-beaked dolphins swimming together with their calves, performing high jumps and even some inverted leaps, and swimming very close to our bow. With all of these playful animals around us we couldn´t help but smile and marvel at the beauty of this species. On the way back we encountered another pod of 10 white-beaked dolphins, and although we were already a bit late we just had to stay to admire this lovely group that was also coming very close to our boat. Such a nice day with three different species of cetacean, showing us the beautiful biodiversity of Faxaflói bay. 

- Eline van Aalderink

Report from Eldey: We had very nice conditions for whale-watching this afternoon: little wind and a very calm sea with good visibility. We found very quickly a first pod of 6-8 white-beaked dolphins. They were swimming fast and porpoising, probably chasing some fish. At the distance we were seeing many other pods, in total we saw during the tour probably 7 different pods of 5-8 white-beaked dolphins. They were all over the place! If the first group was very active jumping with splashes and swimming fast, the other groups were more calm, milling, swimming slowly and close to each other. It was great to see in the same tour different types of behaviours shown by those cetaceans. We kept going further out trying to find some other animals but we could not see anything else than northern fulmar gliding close to our boat. We started heading back and after 15 minutes we spotted a minke whale. This baleen whale was not difficult to observe, going for short dives of 3 minutes and surfacing 2-3 times. After this minke we continued heading back to Reykjavík looking at the beautiful snowy mountains.

- Miquel Pons

Eider duck, black-backed gull, black-legged kittiwake, glaucous gull, herring gull, northern fulmar