Whale-watching safaris lure 80,000 tourists to Iceland every year

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND — Whale-watching is big business on the Arctic island of Iceland, where thousands of tourists pay big bucks to catch a glimpse of whales frolicking in the North Atlantic.
Tourists pay $75 for a three-hour whale-watching tour, although the chance of seeing whales in October isn’t great. The best time to see whales of any size is from May to September.

A recent whale-watching tour out of Reykjavik with Elding’s “Adventure at Sea” provided only a few whales to watch, but it offered guide Einar Orn Einarsson the chance to speak at length about nature: “We can’t control where the whales go,” he said. “Mother nature controls what goes on in this planet of ours.”

Meanwhile, tourists dressed in survival suits scanned the water, hoping to have their cameras focused at the place white-beaked dolphins were expected to surface. At one point, they faced another whale-watching boat also loaded with tourists, watching for a glimpse of the same dolphins. Tourists outnumbered the whales by about 100.

On board, whale-watching gave way to drinking a “whale punch” of rum and coffee in the enclosed cabin decorated with stuffed puffins and whales. A German tourist grumbled, saying he liked Florida’s Disney World a lot more because there he was guaranteed of seeing something.

But Elding’s whale-watching guides say teaching tourists how to experience nature and to learn how to be patient is as much the point of the trip as watching whales.

“We expect that they have false expectations,” guide and marine biologist Edda Elisabet Mangusdottir said. “Some urban people ask, so where does the whale come and when? We must convince people it’s a challenge and when we find the whale, it’s a prize.”

Good marketing by Iceland’s whale-watching companies brought nearly 80,000 tourists last year, up from only 2,000 in 1995. Whale-watching “safaris” in Iceland now net about $27 million. This figure is expected to rise to $40 million by 2007 when the number of whale-watchers will reach 100,000.

And, at the same time that Icelanders are luring tourists out on the water watching whales, they’re also hunting and eating whales. Iceland has a long tradition of whaling, which has been part of life on the island since Vikings arrived there 1,110 years ago. The early importance of whales is reflected in Iceland’s language, where the Icelandic word hvalreki means “beached whale” and “jackpot.”

As in Canada’s Eastern Arctic, foreign whalers took a toll on Iceland’s whale population. Norwegian whalers set up 13 whaling stations around the island in 1883. By 1915, 17,000 whales had been taken from Icelandic waters, and there were no more Northern Right whales or Gray whales left.

The Icelandic Government then banned whaling to allow time for the whale population to recover, but lifted this ban in 1928. By 1935, Icelanders had their own commercial whaling operation, hunting mainly Sei whales, Fin whales and Minke whales. Blue, Sperm and Humpback whales were also hunted until the numbers dropped and the hunt was stopped. Between 1935 and 1985, Icelandic whalers killed about 20,000 whales.

After a 14-year moratorium, Iceland resumed whaling in 2003, with a two-year hunt of 200 Minke whales, 200 Fin whales, and 100 Sei whales for its scientific whaling program.

Iceland’s decision to start hunting whales caused outrage abroad, and the Icelandic Tourist Industry Association worried about the impact of the hunt on whale-watching.

But whale-watching also has an impact: human visits to whales can be a serious threat, with whale-watching boats causing more struck whales then any other vessels except for Navy ships and cargo freighters.

And up to 80 per cent of Icelanders support whale hunting, in spite of the continued international moratorium on commercial hunting.

Jane George visited Iceland in October as a guest of the Nordic Council.