The summer of 2008, The Icelandic Seal Center took part in a pilot research project for Wild North in Iceland. The project was called Ecotourism: Effects on wildlife behaviour. The project’s main objective was to find out if increasing ecotourism in Iceland is effecting wildlife behaviour in natural surroundings. The project was a cooperation between The Icelandic Seal Center, looking at seals in Illugastaðir, The Húsavík Research Center, which looked at whales in Skjálfandi Bay and The Arctic Fox Centre, looking at arctic foxes in Hornstrandir. The project was supported by The Student Innovation Fund.

The Seal Center’s objectives were to:

• Count seals and find out which variables influence the possibility of seeing seals on dry land
• Examine what effect tourist have on the number of seals
• Examine the connection between the number of seals on dry land, and variables such as periods of summer, time of day and tide
• Examine how seals spend their time on dry land

The research area was Illugastaðir farm in Vatnsnes Peninsula, which hosts seal colonies on 3 different sea stacks 100 – 200 metres of-shore.  Seals were also counted at different colonies around the peninsula such as Svalbarð and Hindisvík.

The research’s conclusion is that tourists in Illugastaðir do not seem to disturb the seals in the local seal colonies to any great extent, not in the short run at least. The reasons for that are speculated to be a few, but the main reason is probably that tourist can not get closer to the seals then those 100 m separating the seal watching location from the colonies.  This fact is a huge advantage for Illugastaðir in their quest to develop a sustainable wildlife location, for both men and animals.

These results do not address the long term affect of tourism in the area, therefore a 3 year research will be started at Illugastaðir in the summer of 2009, in connection with the Wild North Project.