WEDNESDAY, 31 OCTOBER 2018

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: We sailed out with the golden arms of the sun still caressing our faces. It would be great if it lasted. And it did to for a long time. An hour out in the sea and our captain spotted the first larger animal in the bay. It was a blow of a minke whale in front of us, 400 m away. Upon decreasing the distance between us we could see that it was a younger individual that was very curious about us. It came with it's head out of the water a couple of times and also "showed" the lateral side of it's body to us on the left and right side of the boat. It was a nice interaction and it was time to leave this individual alone. After continuing the trip further we were very soon in the company of white-beaked dolphins. It's hard to say how many there were, since they were scattered over a large surface area, but I would say that there were at least 20 of them. With the surreal lightning of the setting sun barely hiding behind the cumulonimbus; it was a special treat to observe the cheerful dolphins. What a tour. :)

-Lucas Heinrich

Tour at 9:00

Report from Eldey: This morning was so beautiful! The morning sun casted orange and pink colors on the clouds and mountains around the bay. There was hardly any wind and the sea conditions close to perfection. To our surprise no animals were seen in the areas where we found so many birds, dolphins and minke whales feeding yesterday. It was not until we sailed further south that our first animal popped up, a minke whale! It was elusive and only seen a couple of times. Soon after we left the minke some white beaked dolphins showed up. Although there seemed to be quite a few dolphins around, they were so scattered that only 2 were seen within 500 meters of our boat. One juvenile and one adult, likely its mother. On our way back we saw two pods of harbour porpoises, with together around 7 individuals. Although we had some sightings we decided to hand out return tickets to those that felt they had not seen the animals on the tour. 

- Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Birds seen during today´s tours include: eider duck, european cormorant, razorbill, common guillemot, northern fulmar, northern gannet, iceland gull, great black-backed gull, black-legged kittiwake, sooty shearwater.