Species seen today: Humpback whales, minke whales, white-beaked dolphins, harbour porpoise

Birds seen today: Great cormorant, Arctic tern, Herring gull, Black-headed gull, Atlantic puffin, Great black-backed gull, Eider duck, Black guillemot, Common guillemot, Arctic skua, Oystercatcher

10:00 - It was in a beautiful sunny morning that we started our morning rib tour. The air was so warm that it created a heavy fog in the bay due to the temperature difference between the air and the cold sea water. It was really cool to witness this phenomenon out in the water. As we came out of the fog we started to see a few boats around that is always a good sign that some wildlife must be around. We saw first a few minke whales ! At least a good 10 were in the area, and we got good views on 3 to 4 of them. We then found a pod of 2 white beaked dolphins, and a humpback whale ! As we navigated through the area we realized there was more than 1 individual humpback whale, there was probably around 5 at least along with minke whales and a few more pods of white beaked dolphins. Probably 2 more pods of dolphins of about 5 individuals each. We stayed for a while navigating through the animals and enjoying nice views on the different species. It was a great morning out in the bay !

Crew: Captain Daniel & Guide Melanie, Captain Siggi & Guide Rodrigo

14:00 - What a day this is, so much sun and heat, we need some whales and puffins to top that up! We stopped by Akurey to see the puffins in their natural habitat and after that to the whales we go! We had a glimpse of a small pod of 2-3 harbour porpoises close by when we were going really fast. After a few minutes, we saw our first big cetacean, 1 humpback whale that decided to come to us, we shut down the engines and the whale came reeeeally close and almost touched the boat, we could take really nice pictures and a passenger made a nice video! We couldn't do anything about it, we weren't in the way and then the whale turned to us! Quite an amazing encounter. We then proceeded to follow a huge flock of arctic terns that were feeding on fish on the surface and right there we saw 4 minke whales lunge feeding and making lots of splash. Not too far away we saw a pod of 5-7 white-beaked dolphins jumping and annoying what we saw after, another humpback whale. We heard a big splash, another humpback breached but we just saw the aftermath! Then another one showed up and fluked us goodbye because our time was over. An amazing day out there with the whales!!

Crew: Captain Daniel & Guide Pedro

20:00 - Off to the sunset we went with almost no wind and a flat sea! First, a quick stop at Akurey to check on the mighty puffins, and after that we pointed the bow to the middle of Faxaflói to search for something bigger than a puffin, like a whale! After a few minutes of almost no bumps, we stumbled upon a glimpse of a minke whale that left its stinky breath behind to open our airways. Almost at the same time, a fluke of a humpback whale was seen going down for a longer dive. We waited patiently for it to come back up but it took too long and we had another blow in the distance to investigate! Not too far from it a pod of 7-9 white-beaked dolphins was seen doing some splashes, they were jumping!! All the jumps were a 10/10! Then another humpback came to us and the dolphins to check us out and give us a really nice view of the fluke dive that was an 11/10 without a doubt! We went again to see another pod of 7 or so dolphins that were also jumping, probably because of the presence of the big whale near them. We were quite satisfied with all the cetaceans around us, another 2 minkes pop-up not too far in the middle of an arctic tern tornado. The sun was really low and time as well, so we started to head back to Reykjavík with a new volcano eruption not too far from it, but we couldn't see it from the boat due too the fog that settled in the shore of the Reykjanes peninsula. Oh well, with such a nice sunset on our backs, we were really happy about this sunset tour!!

Crew: Captain Daniel & Guide Pedro

For more information come see us at Ægisgarður 5D, call us on +354 497 0000

or email us at info@whalesafari.is