Whale watching is an activity that use an economic boost to sea communities all over the world. In most of the world watching whales from land is not possible (apart from somewhere like hermanus in South Africa).
Quite understandably whales and other marine mammals do not like the noise of the motor, they will often change their behaviour as the boat heads towards them. This interruption may soon be a thing of the past.
Iceland has introduced several electric whale watching boats.
Introduced by a company called North sailing, they were also the first company to start doing well watching trips back in 1995 (before this Iceland had no whale watching at all, the only money that they made from whales was from killing them).
With whale tourist numbers as high as 300,000 a year (roughly equal to Iceland population), if electric whale watching continues to grow, it could greatly bolster Iceland’s fortunes.
We can only hope that this will lead to Iceland deciding to abandon its lethal whaling, in exchange for the large amounts of money that could come their way.