Author: Eric dos Santos

The Icelandic Seal Center is very excited to announce our selection as a candidate for the ‘Destination of Sustainable Cultural Tourism’ Awards 2019. The winners and runners up will be announced at the European Cultural Tourism Network (ECTN) Awards ceremony to take place in Granada, Spain, on 24 October 2019. The Awards ceremony will be held during the annual ECTN Conference 2019 that will take place on 24-26 October 2019 at Museo Memoria de Andalucía, Granada, Spain.

 

The Icelandic Seal Center (ISC) is an example of a community-academic partnership. Established in 2005 as a community-owned non-profit the ISC is a local initiative aimed at developing sustainable and responsible tourism for Húnaþing vestra, and it continues to help in regional development with wildlife tourism as a focus. Academic partnerships with the ISC include Hólar University, The Marine and Freshwater Research Institute, and Náttúrustofa Norðurlands vestra. Seal Travel, which is a non-profit tourism agency owned by the ISC helps to establish networks of tourism businesses in Húnaþing vestra and other regional partnerships for tourism development. The ISC has an integral role in nurturing the local identity and distinctiveness of a community, strengthening sustainable rural tourism development, and empowering people at the local level to develop policies for the protection of natural and cultural resources.

The Marine and Freshwater Research Institute has, in cooperation with the Icelandic Seal Center, completed a new harbour seal census. The report can be found here. The harbour seal population is estimated to be 9400 animals. Regular population censuses were initiated in 1980 to monitor trends in the population size of Icelandic harbour seals. The current estimate is 72% smaller than in 1980, but 23% larger than in 2016 when the last complete population census was conducted.

Most of the observed decrease in the population occurred between the years 1980 and 1989. Results indicate that the population currently seems to fluctuate around a minimum stock level.

The current estimate is 21% below the governmentally issued management objective for the minimum population size of harbour seals in Iceland (12,000 animals).

To raise the numbers in the population to match the management objective, the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute (MFRI) advises that direct hunting should be banned and that actions must be taken to reduce by-catch of seals in commercial fisheries. If limited hunting will be allowed, MFRI advises that a hunting management system should be initiated, and that reporting of all seal hunts should be mandatory. MFRI further advises that attempts to minimize anthropogenic disturbance of harbour seal colonies are initiated, in particular during breeding and moulting seasons between May and August. The advice can be found here.

On Friday 28 June at 09:00, Cécile Chauvat will be giving a presentation on her research proposal about biospheric values of tourists at seal watching spots in North-Western Iceland. Cécile’s research will assess the correlation between biospheric values of tourists and their knowledge of their impacts on the biosphere.

Naturalist, Einar Ó. Þorleifsson, has taken the reins of a new job with the Northwest Iceland Nature Centre, inconjuction with  the Icelandic Seal Center. He has a degree in geography with concentrations in biology and geology. Einar has spent countless hours over many years studying birds. His specialties are wetlands ecology and wetland birds. In addition, Einar has participated in a wide body of research on the distribution of birds in Iceland, especially those that settled Iceland from the Twentieth Century until today.

Einar will be working on various natural science studies, most based in ornithology, in the wide area under the purview of the Northwest Iceland Nature Centre. His main office is provided by the Icelandic Seal Center in Hvammstangi.

Those who would like to share information about interesting birds (for instance, new nesting sites) or discoveries of plants or unusual geological phenomena are welcome to look to him for more information.

The Icelandic Seal Center has been invited to join a research network called, “Sustainable Tourism Development in the Nordic Arctic.” Dr. Jessica Aquino, Head of Tourism Research, will be ISC’s representative for the network. The aims of this network are to investigate how to utilize existing human capital, natural resources (especially living marine resources), and infrastructure capacity to develop innovative sustainable tourism that can diversify and make Arctic economic development more resilient. This is to be achieved through three interrelated workshops in the Arctic regions of the Nordic countries. The first workshop was hosted in Northern Norway in April 2018. The seconded workshop will be hosted in Northern Iceland from 18-22 March 2019. Funding for this network is provided by NordRegio, UArctic, and the International Network Program of the Danish Agency for Science and Higher Education.