Faxaflói Bay holds one of the North Atlantic's most accessible year-round whale populations, with minke whales sighted on eight in ten sailings and humpbacks appearing June through August.
The rigid inflatable boat—RIB in marine shorthand—arrived in Reykjavik's commercial tour fleet in 2009, cutting transit time to feeding grounds from forty minutes to twelve and lowering the vessel profile to within two metres of the waterline. That proximity matters: a surfacing minke exhales a columnar breath visible at three hundred metres, but the pleated throat grooves and white flipper bands emerge only when the animal passes within ten.
Reykjavik's Old Harbour, a working fish wharf until the quota reforms of 1984, transformed into the city's principal tour departure point after the 2008 financial crisis redirected maritime labour toward visitor services. By 2012 the Ægisgarður pier handled more than seventy thousand whale-watching passengers annually. The RIB speedboat tours depart from the same weathered concrete slips where trawlers once unloaded cod, now marked by orange fenders and ticket kiosks. Operators run twin-engine craft seating twelve to nineteen, each fitted with kill-cord ignition, marine VHF, and flotation suits distributed before departure. The suits—neoprene-lined drysuits in international-orange fabric—serve as both thermal layer and flotation device, rated to fifteen minutes in four-degree water.
Puffins nest on Lundey and Akurey, two low basalt islets four kilometres northwest of the harbour, from late April through mid-August. The Atlantic puffin, a pursuit-diving auk weighing four hundred grams, excavates metre-deep burrows in the islands' turf cap and raises a single chick on sandeels delivered in crosswise bills that hold up to sixty fish. A reykjavik whale and puffin watching rib boat tour typically circles the colonies at idle speed, allowing passengers a fifteen-minute observation window before heading southwest into deeper water where cetaceans feed. Minke whales, the smallest baleen species in Icelandic waters, reach eight metres and surface every ninety seconds when travelling. Humpbacks, identifiable by knobbly flippers and tall blows, breach occasionally but spend most time logging at the surface between dives that last six to eight minutes. White-beaked dolphins, harbour porpoises, and orcas appear irregularly, the latter most common in herring season from January to March.
Guides aboard the RIB boats communicate over helmet-mounted intercoms, narrating species identification and behaviour in real time as the boat repositions. The open deck and low freeboard mean passengers feel the twenty-knot wind and occasional spray, a sensory contrast to enclosed tour vessels. Most departures last between ninety minutes and two hours, constrained by fuel capacity and the physical exposure of standing passengers in moving seas. Weather permitting, operators run three to five sailings daily between nine in the morning and six in the evening, with the afternoon window offering calmer conditions and better light for photography.
3 hr
