Species seen today: Humpback whale, Minke whale, White-beaked dolphin

Birds seen today: Great cormorant, purple sandpiper, arctic tern, arctic skua, northern gannet, black guillemot, common guillemot, Atlantic puffin, northern fulmar, great and lesser black back gull, herring gull, eider duck and ducklings!

10:00 - It was under grey skies that we started our tour. Puffins as always come first, so after 10 min by th puffin islands we started our search for cetaceans. We stopped our ride after 20 minutes because a minke smell in the air. As the boat was stopped we observed a nice minke whale surfacing a few times quite close to us, great first sighting. After 10 minutes we conmtinued toward an other area were we got lucky enough to see a humpback whale. We observed the first individual and went after some time toward a lovely pod of 4 to 6 white beaked dolphins. As we watched that pod a humpback whale appeared and came toward our boat. It was a great sighting again. We headed out to see 2 other individual humpback whales before it was time to head back to the harbour. Definetely a great start of the day. 

Crew: Captain Reynar & Guide Melanie

12:00 - We start our day with a cloudy sky and some wind on our faces. It's colder than yesterday but our hearts were warmed by a small stop by Akurey to check on the puffins flying and floating everywhere! But we wanted something bigger than a puffin, like a whale! And so, we started heading to the middle of Faxaflói and looking for those blows or flocks of birds. Some 20 minutes passed and we had our first sighting in the middle of our course, white-beaked dolphins that played with the boat we could see them underwater and very close to us! But we wanted something even more significant, like a whale. We continued our straight-line mission and after half an hour of a few bumps, a blow with a twist! We thought it was a humpback but it turned out to be a minke whale just passing by, popping up twice and gone forever. It was with surprise that we saw the blow again and much closer, it was our much-expected humpback whale that was just resting on the surface probably after a big lunch. We stayed for a bit, but then our guide spotted a spy hop, another humpback whale checking on us! Our time was over and we started to head back to the harbour but on the way, there was another humpback whale blow very near the boat, quite a surprising day in these Icelandic waters!

Crew: Captain Reynar & Guide Pedro

14:00 - This afternoon the weather was nice with some waves, the hopes were high since in the morning we spotted some cetaceans in the bay. Our first stop was at Engey to see some atlantic puffins. AFter this stop we faced the bay with our zodiac in search for the cetaceans. Didn't took too long fortunately until they appeared, 1 humpback whale surfaced multiple times and did some beautiful fluke dives. After we spent some quality time with this individual we spotted some white beaked dolphins in the distance and went to check them out. Was around 12 dolphins jumping everywhere a very good sighting and they were very close to the boat, we even could see them underwater. Eventually our time come to an end and we had to return back to the harbour after a very succesfull tour.

Crew: Captain Reynar & Guide Rodrigo

20:00 - It was under the midnight sun that we started our tour. There was a lotof puffins by Akurey, which always provide a great sight to the passengers. As we started to sail off to try to find some cetaceans we passed by all of the areas were the previous tour had seen some whales and dolphins. Unfortunately for us we did not get the luck of crossing path with any cetaceans in the first hour and a half of our tour. Around 21h30 we spotted a pod of 3 white beaked dolphins in the waves, we started seeing the dolphins but they were quite fast and elusive, which seemed like a hunting behavior. These dolphins did not want to be seen much so we searched again the area for other animals, passed by all the flocks of birds but unfortunateley did not get any luck. Sometimes the animals remind us that we are in their environment and they will always decide if they want to be seen or not, it is nature. We then headed back toward the harbour, still on the look until the very end and offered complimentary tickets to our passengers for them to be able to come back on our Elding classic tour and hopefully see a bit better the animals.

Crew: Captain Daniel & Guide Melanie

Today we are running whale watching tours at 1000, 1200, 1400 & 2000, and puffin watching tours at 0900, 1030 & 1300.

For more information come see us at Ægisgarður 5D, email us at info@whalesafari.is

or call us at +354 497 0000!