Monday, 11 July 2022

We started with lots of sun today and blue skies, proper summer weather! The whales are still further north so we had to sail up to Hrísey where we encountered a resting Humpback whale. The animal seemed to be floating just below the surface and did not take deep dives, therefore it did not show us the fluke. When whales sleep a part of their brain always has to stay awake to keep coming to the surface to breath. So sleeping whales can still swim and take dives.
On our way back to Akureyri we encountered a pod of White beaked dolphins with calves. Normally White beaked dolphins are further to the north, so we were very lucky with this encounter. We also encountered some very slow swimming Harbour porpoises, these small animals tend to be very shy around boats but these two seemed fine with the boat around and showed themselves multiple times.

In the afternoon the sun was sadly gone but we still had wonderful views of the fjord. The White beaked dolphins had moved further north again, but we encountered a Humpback whale that was under only for short periods of time showing its beautiful fluke with every dive and coming up again after only a few minutes. It even circled our boat coming up very close several times, a great encounter!

Text: Anouk

Images: Gisela and Pete

Departures: Classic 09:00, 13:00 and 17:00, Express 10:00, 14:00 and 21:00