Jökulsárlón take 2

My mother and I went to Jökulsárlón for one evening to try and photograph the northern lights over the floating icebergs. Everything looked promising; good forecasted activity levels and clear skies. We were unsuccessful unfortunately but still it wasn’t a totally wasted journey.

JÖKULSÁRLÓN

Off again to the glacial lagoon tomorrow this time with my mum,  hoping to get some pictures of the icebergs with the northern lights. We will see if mother nature allows me too. Just looking through some of the pictures i took in June from my travels with my dad. 

Northern lights

Beautiful northern lights shining over Reykjvaik this evening 

Sei Whale in shallow waters

What an incredible day. The last couple of days have been very difficult for Elding by the fact that we haven't been able to show our passengers any whales, dolphins here and there, but no whales and the weather hasn't helped us much either, with strong winds and alot of rain. After this mornings tour with an empty bay we where losing hope a little so we tried our luck along the coast of the Reykjanes Peninsula and arn't we glad that we did because what did we see...A SEI WHALE... yes you heard us right a sei whale the third largest rorqual after the blue and fin whale growing to a staggering 21m long. This species is rarely seen on whale watching tours because they prefer offshore waters so you can imagine our surprise to find it in waters of about 40 meters deep. If that wasn't enough we even got the privilege of seeing this whale feeding. Skimming the water for copepods instead of gulping and lunging for food like other rorqual whales such as the Minke Whales. That was incredible in itself but combined with calm seas, a beautiful sunset and Fulmars and Gannets flying past it was definitely a tour to go down in history.  Whoo hoo!!

Long finned pilot whales - Grindhvalur

On the 28th July I was guiding a whale watching tour and heard of a large pod of Long-Finned Pilot whales that were getting alarmingly close to land. This was quite a surprise to us as the last time this happen was in Þorlákshöfn in 1986 where 100 Pilot whales were found dead on the beach as residents woke up and in Njarðvík in 1957 where 100 pilot whales were found close to the harbour and then pushed onto the beaches to utilize and also once in 1875 as far as we know so todays experience was one to go down in Elding history. Once we got there after about 2 hours sailing, and a quick stop with a Minke Whale, we noticed how close the 200 or so pilot whales were actually to the coast. We couldn´t get in between them and land to push them out but soon another smaller boat came that was able to scare them away from land and then we could get in between to help push them further into the bay into deeper waters were they are more comfortable. The whales were obviously stressed but we had no choice, as it would benefit them in the long run. After a while of pushing these whales further out we felt comfortable that they were a safe distance from land and so we left. The passengers had a rare experience on this tour but how many people can say that they have helped save 200 Pilot Whales on our whale watching tours.