Status Tour at 19:00: CANCELED
Unfortunately we have to cancel our Whale Watching tour in the Midnight sun due to unfavorable sea condition. If you have any questions please don´t hesitate to contact us at +354 519 5000 or elding@elding.is
Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: We were again facing challenging sea conditions and strong winds when we left the harbour in the late afternoon. But the sun was shining and the mountains North of the bay were clear of any clouds giving us a nice scenery to look at until we could eventually cross the path of a cetacean. The first one to show up was a very elusive harbour porpoise which unless surfaced once but we could then see its shape swimming very fast away from us just below the surface. It took us quite a long time before we noticed big splashes in the distance. Getting closer we discovered a pod of about seven white-beaked dolphins. The pod included a very young animal and some playful individuals who gifted us with superb jumps above the water. Unfortunately we had to leave the show as we were running out of time and on the way back to Reykjavik a minke whale surfaced quite close to the boat. But like for the porpoise this short surface is the only one we've seen from this animal and we soon had to resume our travel toward the harbour under the sun setting.
- Rémi Bigonneau
Tour at 14:00
Report from Elding: Wind keeps insisting on getting stronger. Spotting has been a challenging task in this tour, since not only a strong wind and a light rain was defying us now and then, but also an enormous amount of whitecaps have been invading all the surface of the Faxa bay. The crew today did their really best to spot some wildlife, but unfortunately not even the animals were friendly with us this time. We returned to the Old Harbour, without seeing any species, so we offered our passengers the possibility to come back again whenever they want in the next two years, by exchanging their ordinary tickets for some complimentary ones. Hopefully, we´ll be having better luck next time!
- Alberto Alejandro
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: the wind had picked up even more since the morning, causing more chop and whitecaps on the waves but we donned our overalls and were ready for action! We had been sailing out about 45 minutes when we saw our first minke whale! This whale surfaced extremely quickly and was mostly hidden by a wave, so was difficulty to spot. Although we waited for 10 minutes we nor the other whale watching boats around did not re-sight this individual so we carried on into the bay. On our journey we came across the most beautiful rainbow, first it was just patches amongst the dark clouds over Akranes but then the clouds came towards us, treating us to the huge and complete rainbow along with spitting rain! After an hour of searching we started to head back, where we did get a fleeting glimpse of a solitary harbour porpoise as well as another minke whale amongst some impressive diving northern gannets. However, as these cetaceans had been very elusive we offered our complimentary tickets, and I sincerely hope our passengers today come back out with us in the next two years and have better luck in seeing the amazing whales around Iceland.
- Ophelie Humphrey
Tour at 10:00
Report from Elding: when we sailed out this morning it was quite windy and we had pretty rough seas but when we had put on the nice looking red overalls we were ready for anything. We tried to keep close to land while we were sailing out to be sheltered from the wind and then once we got to Akranes we changed direction and headed towards the Reykjanes peninsula. We had been sailing for a while when our engineer spotted our first minke whale. It was surfacing frequently and not taking long dives but it was changing direction a lot so it was pretty unpredictable and hard to keep up with. Luckily though some of these direction changes involved coming towards us and swimming alongside us so we got a really good look at it. We then lost sight of it for a few minutes and then saw a huge bubble caused by the minke exhaling under water and the white underside of another minke at the same time so it turned out to be two of them traveling together. We stayed with them until it was time to head back to the harbour and on our way back we spotted a pod of about 4-5 harbour porpoises. They were swimming really close to the boat and we were even able to see them swimming under the surface within 10 meters of the boat! A nice tour with a pair of minke whales and a pod of harbour porpoises.
- Bryndís Ösp
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: Since we knew that the sea conditions would not be favourable today, we decided to look for cetaceans in the northern part of the bay where we get some shelter from the mountains to still make the sailing comfortable. We searched the bay for more than two hours without seeing any signs of whales or dolphins; only a group of 6-8 harbour porpoises traveled by at a high speed in the beginning of the tour. When we were already heading back home, a minke whale surfaced a couple of hundred meters away from us. Unfortunately, only one of our passengers was looking in the right direction at the right time to see it. We turned around to see it again, but next time it came up it was already 400 meters away, disappeared in the waves and vanished. Since we did not spot any more cetaceans on the way back, we offered all our passengers complimentary tickets. These are valid for two years from today and can be used to go on any other whale watching tour with us and hopefully that one will be more successful!
- Hanna Michel
Birds seen on today´s tour: great skua, northern gannets, atlantic puffin, common guillemot, northern fulmar, black-legged kittiwake, great black-backed gull, lesser black-backed gull, manx shearwater.