Harbour porpoises, minke whale and a humpback!

We went on all three NS-1 tours today (10:00, 13:30 and 17:00). The weather was cold and it was snowing in the morning. The sea was a bit rough in the first tour so unfortunately we had a few seasick passengers on board. In the afternoon it calmed down and searching conditions were great.

The first tour of the day was a bit tricky. As I said before it was cold and the sea was moving a lot. We had been searching for almost two hours when we finally spotted a humpback whale pretty close to Húsavík. Thankfully we managed to get a good look at the whale before returning to the harbor.

Passengers on board Náttfari excited about the humpback whale.

Our second tour of the day was a bit more successful. We had three (possibly four) species in one tour! We found a few harbor porpoises early on in the tour. A minke whale appeared shortly after that and then we saw the same humpback whale as that morning close to the minke. After having a good look at these whales we spotted another blow a bit further north. We decided to check it out since we already had a good look at the other whales. While we were on our way we noticed the behavior of the whale was a bit unusual. It stayed on the surface for about ten minutes before it took a deep dive. We weren’t too close to the whale when it raised the fluke, so it’s hard to say, but we are pretty certain it was a sperm whale! Unfortunately we couldn’t confirm it since we didn’t see that whale again. Sperm whales are able to dive for a very long time.

All in all it was a very successful day and hopefully we will find that sperm whale again soon.

Þóra Katrín – guide.