It was a grey misty morning with calm seas when we headed out to look for whales from Reykjavik harbour. We hadn´t been out there long before we saw a fin cutting effortlessly through the water. Normally, we go all the way out to the feeding ground about an hour away from Reykjavik before we see anything, but the last few days there has been so much fish in between the islands that the whales have followed them too. It was a harbour porpoise! It swum pretty close to the yacht, evidently not worried by us being there at all but totally focused on hunting. After admiring it for a while we carried on, and found two humpback whales! They are not normally seen in pairs, and so it was wonderful to see them coming up and diving in unison. Carrying on exploring through the islands we came across a minke whale, a really large one with beautiful markings.
The afternoon tour had the same grey cloud at first but it got very sunny an hour or so into the tour, making visibility a lot better so easier for whale spotting. We found one of the humpback whales that we saw this morning again, gently rising and sinking , at first taking long swims as it headed to deep water where it did a great tail dive. We waited for it to surface again and it surprised us by surfacng right next to the yacht multiple times. We also saw two minke whales zooming around and one of them stayed with us for ages, even coming right under the bow. There were lots of birds in the area, diving northern gannets, fulmars, a few cormorants, and some common murres.
Guide – Klaudia and Lucky
Expert guide and marine enthusiast at Sea Trips Reykjavík.
