Whales of Iceland Updates - Parties, Partnerships & More!

Good morning friends! It's been a while since our last general update, and a lot has happened over the past year. Whales of Iceland is proud to welcome its new operations manager, Martyna Daniel. We are also happy to announce a partnership with Special Tours, our whale watching friends over in the Old Harbour. We have been welcoming many of their passengers to our exhibition.

So far in 2018 we have received two awards that we are very proud of. The first comes from Get Your Guide, where we received a Top Partner Award for 2018. The second comes from our friends over at The Reykjavík Grapevine, where we were voted Best Place to Take the Kids in 2018 - takk fyrir okkur!

We are definitely popular with families and children, and have been continuing our work with the city of Reykjavík to welcome kindergarden groups each week free of charge. We've welcomed over 3,000 students this year - roughly 4 classes each week! We love being able to share fun facts about the whales with the school groups and they are incredibly entertaining and energetic to have around.

Whales of Iceland has also embarked on a plastic-free mission. We are in the process of removing items from our gift shop and café that use plastic packaging to diminish our impact on the environment. They will be replaced with items that are fair trade, eco-friendly or even biodegradable.

We are pleased to be working with 4 Ocean, and are selling their bracelets in our gift shop. The proceeds from these bracelets go entirely to ocean cleanup. For each bracelet sold, one pound of plastic is removed from the ocean - can't go wrong there! We will also be working with Blue Ocean Watch to raise awareness and promote ocean conservation.

There have been several exciting events involving Whales of Iceland this year, including the ''Marine Sanctuaries - Transatlantic Perspectives & New Research in Icelandic Waters'' conference held in February. Here we listened to experts discuss the latest research on whales in Icelandic waters, marine sanctuaries and ocean protection going foward, and what this could mean for Iceland. We co-hosted a party with our friends at Special Tours and Reykjavík Röst this summer for all of our partners in the tourist industry - we had SO MUCH FUN! Thank you again to everyone who came out!

One of the events that we have been most excited for just happened - the first ever Reykjavík Whale Day was last Saturday.This is an event that we have spent a lot of time working towards and it has been fantastic to see it come to life. This was made possible through a collaboration between the City of Reykjavík. IFAW, IceWhale, The University of Iceland, Special Tours, Elding & Whale Safari. More information on the Reykjavík Whale Day can be found in our last blog.

We look forward to having a fantastic rest of the summer, with or without the sun. Stop by and see us sometime soon!

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