Happy New Year! / Looking back at 2013

Another interesting year has now passed full of stories and memories that keep piling up. The weather conditions this year were particularly challenging for us, especially during the latter half of the year. However, despite the weather our passenger numbers kept increasing proportionally to the number of visitors vacationing in Iceland.

Apart from running the tours we kept ourselves busy by attending lots of travel fairs and workshops where we met some of our future and past passengers as well as collaborators working in the tourism industry. We joined the marketing office ‘Meet In Reykjavík’ and took part in strengthening the Old Harbour Association. Rannveig is still a board member for the Icelandic Tourist Industry Association and a Chairwoman for IceWhale while María is a board member for the Tourism Association of the Capital Area. In 2012 we were founding members of the Responsible Whale Watch Partnership (now Whale Watch International) and this year we met other partners at the Whale Watch Conference in Gloucester, Massachusetts in November to discuss the challenges facing the industry and how to raise standards of operation worldwide. In June we also joined a new partnership aiming to protect cetaceans; the World Cetacean Alliance and met up with other partners following the Whale Watch Conference.

The staff had a great time together, at work and outside work. We held our annual party at Hótel Selfoss in March, the summer get together at Rannveig's families summerhouse in Svínadalur and a Christmas Dinner at Argentína Steak House. We were very happy to be selected to take part in an educational program run by the vocational program of the Icelandic Tourist Industry Association and our unions. In the coming year we will continue that work with interesting seminars and workshops for our staff. Environmental work is always priority and this year we were really excited to qualify for EarthCheck's GOLD certification, renew our VAKINN qualifications and to hold the Blue Flag for the eighth year in a row.

Keeping in mind how dependent our tours are on the weather, in particular the sea conditions, it doesn't come as a surprise that the sightings are lower than previous years. We have truly had some ups and downs throughout the year, a few highlights from this past winter has been an amazing afternoon tour in October with orcas in the stunning sunset and an amazing Northern Lights Cruise few days later. We all agree that the absolute low point was the month of November as we've never experienced such poor sightings and rough seas. In the beginning of the year we mainly saw white-beaked dolphins, humpback whales and harbour porpoises and occasionally orcas. The first minke whale of many for the summer came in March and the number of humpback whales also increased periodically. In the months of July and August we were happy to encounter a basking shark, always a surprise as we haven’t seen them often. Also, to our surprise, the second year in a row, we saw a sei whale in September, a species that is usually encountered in deep offshore waters and very rarely seen on whale watching tours.  So there were plenty of species around in the past year. Of these some were quite familiar, for example the minke whales Humpie (2011, 2012, 2013), Pearl (2008, 2009, 2012, 2013) and Midi (Every year since 2008) and the humpback Mr Square seen migrating backwards and forwards between Faxaflói and Skjálfandi Bay since 2011.

Like previous years we've taken together our overall sightings for the year 2013; which we share with you here in comparison to the years before.

We also have news about our other adventure at sea tours. For example, Sea Angling was a big success and we think that it was mainly the culinary experience that did the trick. In addition to offering our guests a taste on board of their freshly grilled catch they could also take their catch to our restaurant MAR for the chefs to prepare a delicious meal for a small price. The catches were generally good, most often cod but also mackerel, haddock, pollack and catfish.

Our dear puffins still haven't recovered after the hard times lately with the food supply, breeding success is still poor and thus their numbers have not yet risen. The situation on the Puffin Watching Tours was quite bad this past summer so by paying respect to nature we had to be really careful, by minimising our disturbance as much as possible but our passengers still got to view them both at the puffin colonies and further out to sea. In light of the puffin situation we have decided not to take our whale watching passengers to the puffin colonies next summer to reduce the amount of boats at the islands and hopefully reduce the disturbance further but the special puffin watching tours will still be running on our smaller, less intrusive vessels.

We knew that the first year running the Northern Lights Cruise would be challenging and it sure was, especially when considering the weather. As amazing as these tours can be the conditions truly need to be right to deliver this exceptional experience at sea. We need calm sea conditions, clear sky, good if not great aurora activity and low moonlight for it to be perfect. Passenger interest has pleasantly surprised us, also their understanding when tours have been cancelled. Despite the frequent scheduling we have only ran few tours so far this winter due to poor conditions. Statistics from this tour are stated below not the best especially in September and October. In case of no northern lights are seen we naturally give our guests a complimentary ticket.

The weather also affected our operation on and to Viðey Island. We kept our pace though and ran a successful series of events that attracted a lot of visitors. The Easter Egg hunt was a huge success and we've decided to make it an annual event. The illumination ceremony of the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER has always been big but still continues to grow year after year. This October 9th we ferried roughly 2000 guests to the island in addition to those from private boats and those watching live online or from the city.

Looking back over the year is always fun and exciting. We are really proud of our achievements and determined to do even better for the up and coming years. We're really pleased with all those nice comments we've received on social media and TripAdvisor. It's been clear to us for a long time that we have a great team running the tours and therefore it makes us glad that our customers appreciate our service and friendliness.

Happy New Year!