Wednesday, 24 August 2016

Eyjafjörður woke up this morning covered on fog. The sail out from Akureyri was an amazing adventure just being able to see 30 meters from the boat; however Össur, the captain, knows very well every corner of the fjord. It was a challenge to spot some animals for all of us; nevertheless the lack of wind gave us the opportunity to hear every single noise in the water. We saw some harbour porpoise swimming parallel to the boat for few seconds before they went for a longer dive. After a while 2 humpback whales came 50 meters far away from the boat like two shades from the deep blue. The beautiful noise from their breaths made it easier to follow the track of these guys in the middle of the fog. Later on we kept silence for a couple of minutes when we could hear the breath of another humpback whale, this time few hundreds of meter far away, we follow the noise until we could manage to see the fluke of the animal. In the afternoon the wind was picking up clearing up the fog from the fjord. We came across three humpback whales which were travelling together. They were coming up at the surface to breathe and going down for a dive at the same time. We have been seeing them together for several days now, more known to us as “Los tres amigos”. The evening was cloudy but the sun gave us heat in some parts of the fjord. We sailed around the island of Hrísey and we saw around eight different humpback whales. It was a wonderful day in the north of Iceland!

• Alejandro García

• Picture: Charlie Frank Lavin