Early this morning our crew met up for a rescue drill on-board our oak boat Sylvía. Whilst the town was still asleep all of us headed out to the outer harbour to train rescue procedures as “Man over board”.
This morning – after a couple of stormy days – the weather surprised us once again, positively this time! Sunshine, blue sky and a calm sea were awaiting us, boats filled up quickly and several RIB speed boat extra departures were added to give everyone the chance to experience Skjálfandi-Bay at its best.
Personally, I am not a big football fan. However, my colleague is and the other day, when Iceland competed with England, he wanted to watch the match so badly that he asked me to take his trip on one of our RIBs.
”The other day I started work early in the morning as I was going to sail on the oak boat “Faldur” on the day’s first departure. The weather was very nice and promising: there was no wind and the sea very calm.
In the past days, we haven't needed to do much searching to find the whales and dolphins in the bay. It seems that everywhere you look, after only sailing for a short time, you encounter another humpback whale.
Yesterday our new RIB speed boat “Amma Helga” arrived to the harbour of Húsavík. “Amma Helga” is the 4th RIB speed boat to join the fleet of Gentle Giants. 'She' was accompanied by our other three RIBs "Amma Kibba", "Amma Sigga" and "Amma Sigga II" on 'her' way into the harbour.
The other day, on our beautiful old fishing boat named « Faldur », we first came across a very active group of white-beaked dolphins. Even though they were swimming away from us in the distance, we could see them jumping multiple times which kicked off the afternoon just right! One blow, two blows, three blows.
Already a few days ago two blue whales were spotted near the Cheek Mountains on the other side of the bay - in a similar area as we could watch the humpbacks feeding intensely for the past few weeks.Then, this morning a mother blue whale and her calf, which had been spotted yesterday far north, swam all the way in and boats reached them within minutes after having left Húsavík harbour.
This past week, the University of Iceland´s marine mammals course held its annual student presentations. For the week prior, the students joined Gentle Giants on several whale watching trips while learning about four research methods used to study whales: photo-identification, boat based tracking, behaviour, and acoustics.
The cruise ship "Ocean Diamond" from Iceland Pro Cruises visited us in Húsavík once again.As previously, all three RIB speed boats as well as the oak boat "Faldur" departed to take the cruise ship's passengers and crew out on a whale watching adventure in Skjálfandi Bay.
