Sunday, 28th June 2026
Raining, cloudy, but with a calm sea, that was how we started our first tour of the day with our smaller classic boat, Konsul, and one of our RIB boats, Diplomat. We didn't have to travel far to find our first humpback whales. Just off the town of Svalbarðseyri, we encountered two humpback whales. They were a bit tricky to watch, as they weren't spending much time at the surface and weren't showing their flukes. However, with so many birds around, we knew there was likely plenty of food in the fjord, attracting the humpbacks so close to Akureyri. This was confirmed when we saw one of them lunge-feeding very close to the shore.
After spending some time with these two humpbacks, we decided to continue north. The rain stopped, and along the way we spotted a minke whale and several harbour porpoises. We reached the green buoy, where we stopped heading north, as another humpback whale, known as Poppy, appeared and treated us to a few breaches and some pectoral fin slaps.
In the afternoon, the sun became the star of the sky. This time, we headed out on our bigger boat, Hólmasól, in search of whales. South of the green buoy, we encountered two humpback whales, which occasionally surfaced close to the boat. A small group of harbour porpoises also gave us one of the cutest moments of the tour.
As for birdlife, the fjord was full of northern fulmars, black-legged kittiwakes, common guillemots, razorbills, Arctic skuas, and puffins!
Our evening tour started with glass like seas, clear skies and the sun shining, our first sighting was just outside Akureyri, south of Svalbarðseyri, where we found our first humpback whale of the trip. It was actively lunge-feeding, bursting through the surface again and again and lifting at least half of its body out of the water. After enjoying this incredible encounter for quite some time, we continued our journey north to see what else the fjord had in store, near Krossanesi, we spotted a minke whale before continuing on to Stryta, where we spotted another humpback whale.
Text and images: Gema & Anna
Tours gone: Classic - 09:00; 13:00; 20:30 and Express - 10:00; 1400 and 21:00