It seems like a no brainer not to visit the island of Iceland without going out on the waters surrounding it. So we left out of the port of Húsavík in northern Iceland on a whale watching trip.

Our ship was the Sylvia, a fishing boat built in 1976. It felt good to to have vessel under my feet that was slightly younger than I am. Our to guides where biologists from Portugal but our captain was purely Icelandic.

We headed out of port under gray skies and light winds. A rain system had passed through the previous night and it looked like a good day for a three hour cruise, a three hour cruise.

As we left port we passed a large cruise ship. Black guillemots where in the harbor and once out of the harbor, gulls, terns, and fulmars circled the boat. Further out and we began to see our first lines of puffins crossing our bow. We had to get a little further out in the fjord to see our first cetaceans.

Our first cetacean of the cruise was a lifer for me, a small pod of white-beaked dolphins! Well this was a great start. Let’s see if we could get some whales!

It was not too long before we saw the bushy blow of a whale. We headed towards the blow and we saw the first whale of our trip, a humpback whale. On the rest of the cruise we saw about five other humpbacks, with amazing looks at the whales and their unique flukes.

After seeing about seven different humpbacks we headed back to port. As we neared Húsavík I looked off to the southwest and saw a dark bird with white “wing lights” flying towards. “Skua!”, I shouted. Once the passengers figured out that a skua was not a whale but a pelagic bird, they suddenly lost interest. But I, and my fellow bird nerds enjoyed the great skua flyby!

Coda: There are three nations that still actively whale, one of which is Iceland. Shortly before we set out on our whale watching trip er learned that Iceland had put a three month moratorium on whaling. Hopefully this will lead to a permanent ban.