Selasetur Íslands

Volunteers Needed at the Icelandic Seal Center
Come join us for our annual Great Seal Count at the Icelandic Seal Center. We need groups of volunteers to count seals along the coastline of the Vatnsnes Peninsula.

Saturday, July 30 at 09.00, the Great Seal Count will be held by the Icelandic Seal Center in Hvammstangi. We encourage everyone to participate, whether you are a local, landowner, or tourist on your trip around the country. Participation gives people the opportunity to see harbor seals in their natural environment.

Program for the counting day:

At 09:00 is the delivery of data, presentation, and training at the Seal Center. Coffee and drinks are available for participants.

At 10.30-14.00, the seal count takes place and it is good to have binoculars with you.
When you are finished, registration of data online or submission of data inbox at the Icelandic Seal Center.

More information about registration later

Dr. Aquino is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Rural Tourism and is Head of Tourism Research at the Icelandic Seal Center. The article, Teaching wildlife tourism management: reflection on culture, nature, and wildlife, can be downloaded for free to the first 50 people at www.tandfonline.com.

This article describes an elective wildlife tourism management course at the University of Lapland. This teaching/learning course focused on blending theories used in place-based education to help students better grasp and explore their philosophical understanding of culture, nature, and wildlife and how these affect management actions. The research used arts-based methodologies as a tool to document and facilitate individual and group reflection. Experiential learning was used to explore how managers can help to create sustainable places to live, work, and visit through the co-creation of more ethical management practices that benefits local communities, incorporate a sense of place, and protects the ecosphere. The main outcomes of the course were to inspire further learning about environmental philosophy outside of the classroom and to help students push the boundaries of their own philosophical understanding of culture, nature, and wildlife.

The information center and museum will open on January 3, 2022.

Opening hours are from 13-15 working days.

Dr. Jessica Aquino, December 2, at 8 pm at Icelandic Seal Center

The concept of ethics of care has moved from its inception as a care between two people to a much broader feminist moral philosophy and public ethics. Ethics of care is about a community that supports us and whom we support. Care is an ongoing process that transcends the idea of environmental stewardship to understand humans as members of a “living web”. Using the ethics of care approach this presentation aims to develop an analytical framework for community development practices in sustainable tourism development. It will answer the research question, what kind of insight does the ethics of care approach reveal about community development practices within sustainable tourism at the Icelandic Seal Center?

The presentation concludes with a discussion about future work.

A new paper was recently published by Cécile M. Chauvat, Dr. Jessica Aquino, and Dr. Sandra M. Granquist. The article’s name is Visitors’ values and perceptions of seal watching management in Northwestern Iceland.

Cécile works for the Natural Institute of Northwest Iceland in collaboration with the Icelandic Seal Center. Jessica is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Rural Tourism at Hólar University and Tourism Research at the Icelandic Seal Center. Sandra works for the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute and Seal Research at the Icelandic Seal Center. The article, Visitor’s values and perceptions of seal watching management in Northwestern Iceland can be downloaded here. The article is free to the first 50 people.

Disturbance due to tourism may impact the critically endangered population of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) in Iceland. Improved seal watching management is a promising strategy for seal conservation. Previous research indicates that the value orientation of tourists can predict acceptance of wildlife management and awareness of the potential impacts of tourism on seals. The goal of this study was to (a) define biospheric and egoistic value orientation of seal watching visitors, (b) investigate how these values correlate with the opinion of visitors towards different management actions and awareness of the potential impact of tourism on seals, and (c) investigate which management actions would be acceptable for visitors. Visitor questionnaires were distributed in NW Iceland (n = 597). Results show that seal-watching visitors, in general, had high biospheric values, low egoistic values, and were open to most management actions suggested in the study. High biospheric values were correlated with acceptance of management actions and awareness of the usefulness of regulations. High egoistic values were correlated with low acceptance of management actions and low awareness of the impacts of seal watching. Results will inform managers on how to optimize management strategies at seal-watching sites in Iceland and elsewhere.