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The Seal Center at Þjóðarspegill conference

The Seal Center has representatives at the Þjóðarspegill, an annual conference at the University of Iceland on October 31st 2014. 

Dr. Georgette Leah Burns, head of Tourism Research Depatment, will give a talk on wild life and how tourists can experiense wild life and at the same time minimize the effect on the life of the animals. 

Dr. Burns also has a poster at the conference with her coauthors, Sandra Granquist, head of biology research at the Seal Center and  Sarah Marschall,  master student at the Seal Center. The poster is about the connection of wild life and tourism, mainly different ways to inform tourists on how to conduct in the proximity of wild life and the impact of information given.   

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Seal Counting from air

Seal Center specialists are now working on counting harborur seals from air.  The goal of the project is to evaluate 3 diffferent methods of counting from air, by an airplane, a drone and from a helecopter. The methods will be compared.
 
The last count from air was done all around Iceland in 2011. This year we did not receive funding to count all over the country. The colonies that are being counted this year are:  Akraós, Löngufjörur, Heggstaðanes, Hvammsfjörður, Vatnsnes, Strandir, Ísafjarðardjúp, Rauðisandur, Arnarfjörður og Suðurland. 
 
Project manager is Sandra Granquist, co project manager is Erlingur Hauksson.
 
Tryggvi Stefánsson specialist at Svarmi with the drone that is being used for counting the harbour seals.
 
Project managers Erlingur Hauksson and Sandra Granquist
 
Seal colony by air
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Master Student at the Seal Center

Specialists at the Seal Center ofthen get requests to supervise studends working on their thesises. Currently Sarah Marschall a master student at the University Center of the Westfjords is working on her master thesis under the supervision of both Sandra Granquist our head of biology department and Dr. Leah Burns our head of tourism reasearch department. Sarah is working on a project on how to best get information to tourists regarding how to behave around wild animals to minimize negative effects.

Sarah Marschall (left) wit Valerie volunteer at the Seal Center. Valerie assists Sarah doing field work in august.  

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Volunteers at the Seal Center this summer

Two volunteers have been assisting Sandra Granquist head of our biology department this summer. One a fully licensed veterinarian from Germany, the other a veterinarian student from France. They have mainly been doing work at our laboratory, preparing samples etc. Being able to get volunteers to assist at the Seal Center is very important for the operation of the Center and we thank them for their help this summer.

Valerie Scoll veterinarian student from France working
at the Seal Center lab.