Elding research and tagging whales!

Whales are important to Elding, after all, healthy whales are the cornerstone of our business. They're so important, in fact, that Elding has been collecting information on species diversity, distribution, abundance and site fidelity of whales in Faxafloi Bay for many years. This information tells us how the whales in the bay are doing, it lets us know if our operating code of conduct is sufficient to avoid harming whales, and helps shed light on these animals we know so very little about.

Documenting species and behavior only answers part of the question, if you want to know what whales are doing when boats are not around, you need to employ some creative techniques. That's where telemetry comes in. Telemetry is basically a fancy word for attaching little gadgets that track where animals go and what they do.

As part of Elding’s research program, we began fine scale telemetry research in the summer of 2015. Fine scale telemetry is sort of like a Fitbit for whales. We attach a small device with suction cups that logs everything the whale does. When the device pops off, we can analyze how the animal behaves when we can no longer view it with our eyes.

For 2016-2018 we will be adding satellite telemetry to the fine scale tagging. Satellite telemetry can tell us what areas of Faxafloi bay are important, it can tell if the whales our business depends on are at risk of being harpooned by whalers, and it can shed light into the litte known migratory behavior of whales.

Faxafloi Bay is home to not just whales, but the worlds second largest living fish, the Basking Shark. While basking sharks are fish, and not mammals like whales, we can attach tracking devices to them to learn of where whales might travel as well.

Elding is also participating in the Flukebook project. Flukebook connects whale watchers around the world so that they can share photo-id information and learn more about where Iceland's whales may travel. Passengers too can submit their fluke and dorsal photos at www.flukebook.org.

From researchers aboard our trips documenting sightings, to focused tagging efforts, Elding is working hard to be a responsible and top notch whale watching operation.