Jan Mayen research expedition reporting astonishingly good weather

The sailing ship Donna Wood, North Sailing´s newest fleet member set sails for Jan Mayen earlier this week with a group of researchers from St. Andrews University. The research group´s main goal is to research bottlenose whales. A report from captain Christian states that many “bottlenose whales have been spotted. Humpbacks, sperm whale and minkis have…

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Four species in the morning!

Of the 23 different species of Cetaceans that have been recorded in Icelandic waters, 4 are most commonly seen: Harbour Porpoise, White-beaked Dolphin, Humpback Whale, and Minke Whale. And on the morning tour we saw all of them! 2-3 Porpoises popped up towards the front of the boat very close by just after we had…

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whale fun in the sun

After a short journey to the middle of the bay we encountered a Humpback whale which was very friendly towards us. It surfaced in short time intervals and came several times close to the boat. After that we saw a really big blow and started a journey in northerly direction. We encountered the biggest animal…

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Blue whale dinner party

On Friday we had to go quite far north again but it was well worth it. We saw a Humpback and Blue whales. After we had a nice encounter with a humpback whale we went further west to pick one of the Blue whales to look at. This Blue whale seemed to be feeding at…

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Winter in June????

It’s hard to believe that it’s already mid-June. This season is called “summer” in other parts of the world, but obviously not here in Iceland. The wind from the north brought quite high waves but also very cold temperatures. We couldn’t believe our eyes when it started snowing! Difficult conditions for spotting the whales through…

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Plenty of food

After the wonderful sunny day yesterday this Wednesday started pretty gray and rainy. However, the sea was perfectly flat when we headed out into the bay. Consequently, it was quite easy to spot a surfacing black back from a big distance already. We got closer and encounetred a humpback whale. The individual was very calm and…

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Three species in sunny weather

Today we had pretty nice weather conditions here in Skjálfandi Bay with a lot of sunshine, so hopefully summer is finally arriving here in the north of Iceland.   I went on two tours on our biggest boat “Garðar” (at 10:00 and 13:30) and both tours have been really successful. In the morning we came…

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On a sunny Sunday

On a sunny Sunday we encountered a small group of dolphins on the way up northwest. Some minutes later we saw another blue whale. We spend quite some time with the blue whale as it was diving for a long time and we wanted to get a good look at it. After a few encounters,…

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Four species for the whale watchers

The Saturday morning started with a lot of sun and shortly after leaving the harbor we encountered our first species. We saw some harbor porpoise and shortly after that we had a small group of white beaked dolphins swimming around the boat. After some time we saw a big blow far in the distance. On…

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Blue whale party

We had an amazing day on Friday. We encountered lots of humpback whales with some of them breaching and blue whales.   However, the most special trip I ever had started at 8pm. We went out with the hope to see the biggest animal on earth again but if you do trips to see wild…

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Surprise after the storm

The first week of June started very stormy and due to the bad weather conditions we had to cancel our tours on Monday and Tuesday. But yesterday the storm calmed down and we had the chance to go out again. It’s always exciting to sail out after a “break”. The wind and high waves influence…

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