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NATURE BLOG ARCHIVE

Elding Whale Watching Akureyri has been keeping track of whale sightings in Eyjafjörður since the beginning of May 2016. Read the nature blog to follow up on past sightings.

NATURE BLOG ARCHIVE

Thursday, 7 February 2019

Again, a sea of surprises was waiting for us on our daily trip into the fiord. We sailed out in the middle of a blizzard, not knowing if the snow was meant to fade away, thus giving us more chances to find the whales. So it did (although it was a constant until the end of the tour), and after almost one hour and a half we finally got to enjoy two Humpback whales. Although quite close to each other, the individuals were clearly diving by their own and maintaining the distance among each other. We spotted Jackson once more, and we were surprised to see the animals really close to our boat as they surfaced unexpectedly meters away from us. A truly remarkable tour!

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Wednesday, 6 February 2019

We sailed out with what it looked to be a gale constricted to the Akureyri area but that, luckily, faded away the Northern we sailed in the fiord. After we crossed the area of Hjalteri we found our first and only cetacean of the day: a Humpback whale. The individual swam relaxed for almost the entire interaction. Towards the end, the typical surfacing behaviour switched towards a more shuffled behaviour. The whale was taking longer between surfacings, and was almost never going for long deep dives. We decided to leave the whale in peace and we slowly started our sail back to the harbour of Akureyri!

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Tuesday, 5 February 2019

Another winter afternoon in Akureyri with freezing temperature of at least -12 degrees we sailed out the Fjord to look for the Whales. A beautiful snowy landscape, calm ocean and lots of birds that were keeping us company made the tour very enjoable from the beginning. It took us a while to find two very relaxed Humpback whales travelling together around Hrisey Island. They were surfacing ofen and calmly, going for dives together. Both whales have been our regular visitors this winter and we’ve seen them a lot in January but not together. We stayed with them for a while but didn’t want to disturb them and headed back to Akureyri under the sky in already sunset colours above Eyafjordur.

Pictures and text: Ania Wójcik

Monday, 4 February 2019

Day of adventures in or beloved fiord! We had sun, snow, sun again…! And although it was calm and there was no wind in the fiord, we faced a bit of swell when we arrived to the area of Hrísey. The first marine mammal that we saw today was, for a change, a Harbour Seal that was lying over an ice plate that was formed over the sea surface. After that, and almost two hours after the beginning of the tour, we came across three Humpback whales that were swimming towards the South. We quickly lost the couple that was traveling together, but we stayed with the one that was traveling alone: an old well-known whale of us that we call Jackson. After some difficult days, it feels good to enjoy some time with our Eyjafjordur whales!

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Sunday, 3 February 2019

We sailed out with some fog and extremely cold temperatures (almost -20ºC according to some forecasts!). The sea was pretty calm though, and after a while we also enjoyed the sun shinning over the waters of the fiord. Unfortunately we were not able to spot any whales on today’s trip, so we offered some complimentary tickets to our passengers. Hopefully we will have a bit more of luck on the upcoming days!

Text by Alberto Alejandro

Saturday, 2 February 2019

We sailed out in a quiet cold winter afternoon. Luckily for us the snow is giving us a break, and during the tour we were even capable of seeing the sun shining over the fiord! The improving weather conditions have definitely helped us in finding again the whales: we spotted our first and only Humpback whale of the day just right in front of Hjalteri. We received some information pointing out that there were other whales further North but, since the individual we observed was surfacing quite regularly we decided to stick around it. Overall, a really nice experience in the company of a wonderful and truly giant of the sea!

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Friday, 1 February 2019

A rather challenging tour, we went out but no further than beyond Hjalteyri area. Strong wind and blizzard, thick fog and enormous waves even so deep in the Fjord made it impossible to go further out. We spotted a Humpback whale around Svalbarðseyri but just gasping for air and going for a dive immediately. We’ve seen him twice, still quite far away from us and we decided leave him to look for other animals that would be easier to follow. This time we didn’t succeed. We made a circle and tried to look for that individual again but we haven’t found him again. We came back to the harbor and offered complimentary tickets for all passengers. Hopefully we’ll have better conditions tomorrow, the forecast looks much better!

Picture and Text: Ania Wójcik

Wednesday, 30 January 2019

Another amazing day to be out there in the Fjord! Cold morning in Akureyri greeted us with quite challenging conditions again - thick fog starting right beyond Svalbarðseyri surrounded us for over an hour limiting the view badly. However it didn’t stop us from having wonderful experience with whales - we found today 3 Humpback Whales travelling together synchronized. One of them was our regular visitor called Jackson and he was always the first one to go for a dive and two other were following. Stunning encounter when at second surfacing the whales showed up just 2-3 meters away from us! At this point the weather was getting better and on our way back we even enjoyed some sun.

Pictures and Text: Ania Wójcik

Tuesday, 29 January 2019

Today’s tour was anything but boring. Definitely adventurous, for sure challenging and incredibly beautiful. We experienced highlights of Icelandic weather probably with everything except rain - just name anything that comes to Your mind - sun, snow, hail, wind, fog, blizzard it was all there in those 3.5 hours. At this point I should probably mention also those 4-5 meters high waves that made our trip even more extreme but it was worth going out there. We spotted at least two and possibly 3 Humpback whales in total - due to thick fog all around us it was not easy to track the animals but we had a nice and close encounter with Jackson Humpback Whale and great surprise at the end of the tour where we found a very relaxed and playful Humpback whale crushing the ice and spy-hopping. We also spotted lots of bird life on the way and we were surrounded by constantly changing stunning light - I think we have never taken that many great landscape pictures so far!

Pictures and Text: Ania Wójcik

Monday, 28 January 2019

The word of the day is… BREACH! What an incredible experience to have one of these amazing giants jumping a few meters away from the bow of our boat! The first Humpback whale that we saw, just 10 minutes away from the harbour, jumped two times for the delight of our passengers (and the crew!). We can never predict this behaviour but, whenever it happens, it definitely makes your day! Afterwards we kept sailing North and we found 3 other individuals, swimming gently around the island of Hrísei. Despite the blizzard that followed us during almost all the tour, the day has been an outstanding one!

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Sunday, 27 January 2019

What an outstanding morning we had today in the fiord! Although the coldest one of the winter (-15ºC, and even a colder wind chill factor), we sailed out with clear skyes and just a bit of breeze around the bay. There were 3 humpback whales waiting for us further away than Hjalteri, the old Herring Station. When we arrived to their position, we enjoyed a wonderful time with them since they were frequently coming to the surface. Indeed, they were almost always around the same spot, and in several occasions they swam just a few meters away from our boat.  On and all… an incredible experience!

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Saturday, 26 January 2019

Calm windless morning, sky like like from ‘Disney’ movie and two relaxed Humpback whales - a wonderful day to be out there. We started the tour from enjoying stunning highlights of Eyafjordur landscape in warm sunrise sun. Just beyond Hjalteyri we spotted two Humpback whales and thick cloud of fog in which eventually it also started snowing and that created beautiful background to our Whales. Two humpbacks seemed to be very relaxed, at the beginning they kept distance from each other, later they started coming up together and at the end again separately with the distance from each other. We enjoyed observing them surfacing and showing up their flukes most of the tour - because of thick fog it would be hard to look for more animals, but as we didn’t want to interrupt them too long, we headed back to Akureyri.

Pictures and Text: Ania Wójcik

Friday, 25 January 2019

What a show - a stunning tour! We started from spotting a small pod of Harbor porpoises around Svalbarðseyri but since they disappeared very quickly we headed out north and just around Grenivík we've noticed our first two Humpback whales - moving together quite far from us and one more whale swimming alone at our side - that turned out to be Jackson. He was very relaxed and resting so we decided to stay with him at the beginning but the couple got our attention as they started to showing us their flippers and side of their tails so we headed in their direction. At this point they all went for a dive and that was a long dive - we waited at least 15 minutes before they showed up again and when they finally did, we've seen all 3 of them together! They were clearly interacting with each other, showing us flippers, tails and bellies moving very close to each other. We’ve heared "trumpeting sound" few times which might indicate that one of the whales was unhappy with presence of another. They were staying on the surface most of the time when finally went for a dive, they went all together and came back also all together. On our way back we spotted two more humpback whales and that was Jafar and one more whale that we couldn’t identify. Five individuals of humpback whales and fantastic show of whale interactions. Unforgettable experience and surely one of the best tours this year so far!

Pictures and Text: Ania Wójcik

Thursday, 24 January 2019

Today's tour was a true winter experience in Iceland - cold morning and challenging sea conditions to spot animals, as the fog (that came out of nowhere) was piking up and limiting visibility badly. Luckily the ocean stayed calm and we enjoyed sailing through winter landscape of Eyafjordur. We found two big individuals of Humpback whales on west side of Hrisey Island and we watched them surfacing more than several times around the boat and showing us their beautiful flukes. Unfortunately as my camera died at the very beginning of the tour, the identity of the whales still needs to be investigated but thanks to one of our passengers - it will be possible! Today's great pictures on the blog we owe to Karen Am Ende - Thank You Karen!

Text: Ania Wójcik
Pictures: Karen Am Ende

Wednesday, 23 January 2019

Another challenging yet, eventually, quite rewarding day spent out in the Eyjafjordur. The first 3/4 of the tour were, indeed, quite unsuccessful: we headed North, arriving almost to the entrance of the fiord without seeing any cetaceans. With a beautiful sunny day and calm weather it was, however, an impressive tour following both the East and the West coasts of this impressive fiord. It wasn’t until the very end that, finally, we spotted an impressive pod of 5 Humpback whales. Better than that, upon our arrival we gazed them feeding in the surface (a particular behavior called lunge feeding), and showing aerial behaviors such as pectoral waving and a peduncle throwing at the very end! Although we spent a rather short time with the animals, the waiting was definitely totally worth it!

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Tuesday, 22 January 2019

After a couple of difficult days, we had a wonderful winter day with clear skies, no wind, and the sun was, finally, shinning above the entire fiord. It didn’t take too long until we found our first cetacean of the tour, a humpback whale. The individual was chilling around, going for slightly long dives, and giving us a nice show for more than 40 minutes. Afterwards we tried to find some other whales but unfortunately we didn’t find any, so we came back on our steps to enjoy the Humpback for a few more minutes.  We also got to see a small pod of Harbour porpoises quite close to Akureyri. A wonderful way to end our trip.

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Monday, 21 January 2019

What an amazing tour we had this morning! We sailed out in the middle of a blizzard, so for the first half of the tour we couldn’t spot anything. It wasn’t until we reached the east coast of Hrísei, the island in the middle of Eijafjordur, that we found the first cetaceans of the day: a pod of 7-10 White beaked dolphins. Afterwards we circled the island, finding a big pod of harbor porpoises and, finally, a couple of Humpback whales! Even better, on our way back we encountered a third whale right in front of Akureyri, a few meters away from the coast. Again, a well spent time in the fiord!

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Sunday, 20 January 2019

A rather complicated tour the one of this morning! Despite we enjoyed clear skies and the ambience temperature was not exceptionally low for Icelandic Winter standards, the wind was clearly playing against us today. We saw the first and only whale of the trip about 30 minutes after departure. Although we experienced a nice close encounter, we were not able to keep tracking the individuals due to the wind, so we proceeded our travel towards the North of the fiord. We went as far away as past the island of Hrísey (my personal record in the fiord!) but unfortunately, we were not able to spot any other whales. Nonetheless, we enjoyed an amazing view of the scenery, as the winter cold sun was throwing its dim rays over the mountain ranges that surround the fiord.

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro

Saturday, 19 January 2019

We sailed out today on a fairly windy morning, although we enjoyed clear skies and, by the end of the tour, the wind was calming down as well. Our Eyjafjordur Humpback whales were waiting for us quite far away: it was only after the first hour of the trip had passed that we spotted in the distance 3 blows produced by 3 different individuals. The animals were indeed coming into the fiord, so we spent a nice time tracking them down and sailing alongside them. We even got to identify one of the individuals as Jackson, a well-known Humpback whale that has been seen frequently for the last few months. All and all, another amazing trip with these wonderful giants of the sea!

Pictures and text by Alberto Alejandro