Whales everywhere

Today I went on two tours on our biggest boat, Garðar, at 10:00 and 13:30. Both tours were a great success with several humpback and minke whales as well as white-beaked dolphins being spotted on both tours. But the second tour was really unique.

I went out together with Þorbjörg and we took turns with the guiding. We sailed into the area were we had seen humpback and minke whales on the morning tour and it didn’t take us long to spot the first two minke whales. But we only had a short look at them, because we immediately spotted two humpback whales surfacing together. They were really calm and often surfaced together right next to our boat, one of them is actually one of the largest humpback whales I have ever seen in my three years of guiding here in Skjalfandi Bay. While we were waiting for the humpbacks to come up again, we saw more and more minke whales surfacing in the distance.

We went over there to have a look at the minke whales and soon we were surrounded by minke whales. They were just surfacing everywhere, all around us! Þorbjörg and I guessed that there were probably 8 to 10 minke whales in the area. We also saw a third humpback whale coming up and on the way back we ran into a nice group of white-beaked dolphins that were jumping for us and came bow-riding for a few minutes. Some passengers also spotted a seal a bit later. All in all, a wonderful trip with almost constant whale watching and both passengers and crew were really impressed by the number of whales.

Christian, guide