Wednesday, 4 May 2022

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00, and 14:00 Premium Whale tours and 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
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 12:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00

 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 Elding: The morning was off to a good start in amazingly beautiful morning sun and good whale watching conditions. Already after 10 minutes of sailing, we spotted a very unusual but extremely curious white-beaked dolphin. Just one! It was bow-riding with the waves that our boat created. What a promising start of the tour! We kept course and suddenly a spout could be seen at the distance, and once we reached the area, we waited and waited and no animal was surfacing. Later on we could see another blow in another area so we went there and there was a humpback whale! We had a few nice views of the animal who was swimming quite relaxed and stayed on the surface for a lot of breaths, eventually going for a deep dive and showing us its gigantic fluke. As we were heading back to Reykjavik, we saw a glimpse of two harbour porpoises who crossed their path with us. They were very small, and they were swimming next to our bow, and as usually quite elusive. All in all a very good tour with amazing weather and beautiful sightings.

- Estel Sanchez Cami

Report from Elding: We sailed straight to the area where we saw the humpback whale this morning, on the way admiring the landscape of the Reykjanes peninsula in front of us. In the area, we saw the blow, dark back, and fluke of a humpback whale, but this was a different individual than in the morning. This individual was taking very short dives of about two - three minutes, and stayed very close to the boat during each surfacing sequence. The whale was larger than average and its powerful blow was very loud as it exhaled close to our boat. Having enjoyed this calm whale for some time, we decided to explore different areas of the bay to see what else we could find. We soon saw the dark grey back and dorsal fin of a minke whale! This whale surfaced quite frequently, but after going for a deep dive it came up at some distance so we wanted to let this travelling minke whale continue its journey by itself. In our final exploration round before heading to Reykjavík, we briefly encountered 3 harbour porpoises, and then spotted another minke whale! This minke whale came up very close to the boat so we got a good look at this beautiful species before we set off to the harbour. 

- Eline van Aalderink

Report from the RIBs: Conditions remained good throughout the afternoon tour and we first headed back to where we had such good luck this morning. Not long after arriving in the area, we spotted a blow and saw the same humpback whale we saw first this morning! We stayed with this individual for a while but moved on after we'd seen its tail a few times because there were other boats around. We continued with our tour and after following a small group of arctic terns, we spotted a pod of 5 white-beaked dolphins. We were able to watch this group but they didn't want to come too close to the boat and we saw why - they had a calf with them. We decided to leave them to it and head back into the harbour. On our way back, we were surprised by 2 more white-beaked dolphins as they started bow riding with our boat for a while. What a way to end the tour!

- Emily Erskine

Northern fulmar, northern gannet, eider duck, atlantic puffin, black guillemot, common guillemot, razorbill, black-legged kittiwake, greater black-backed gull, lesser black backed gull, greylag goose, herring gull, arctic tern.