DIVE.IS News
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BIG NEWS - VOLCANIC ERUPTION ON THE REYKJANES PENINSULA
19.12.2023 A 4-kilometer-long (2.5 miles) fissure eruption started on the Reykjanes Peninsula on Monday, December 18. This marks the fourth eruption in the area in three years.
This event does not affect DIVE.IS operations, nor should it affect your trip to Iceland.
Keflavik airport remains open at this time, and there is no reason to believe it will close.
The area had previously been evacuated and the eruption does not pose immediate threat to people.The eruption area is contained, and the lava is flowing away from the towns.
We recommend visiting SafeTravel.is for all up-to-date information about this event.
DIVE.IS awarded Best of the best Traveler's choice award on Tripadvisor 2022
04.01.2023 DIVE.IS has been awarded The Best of the Best Traveler's choice award of 2022 by Tripadvisor. The operator’s tour ‘Silfra: Snorkeling between tectonic plates’ is in 5th place of the Top Snorkeling & Water Sports in the World.
The annual Best of the Best award is Tripadvisor's highest recognition awarded to the businesses that are ranked in the top 1% of properties worldwide, that consistently earn excellent reviews from world travelers and are continually the Best on Tripadvisor.
The same tour was also chosen for the Tripadvisor's Travelers Choice awards in 2019, then taking 4th place in the Experiences category.
Höskuldur Elefsen, DIVE.IS' CEO, says he is "extremely proud to again be featured on the Best of the Best list. The mindset of the guides and office team is quality service, safety and professionalism and that is reflected in the experiences our guest's share with us in our almost 8000 positive reviews. Our primary goal is to always create an unforgettable experience in the minds of those who join us on this adventure and this is now being recognized with continued five-star reviews on Tripadvisor. I am especially proud to receive the recognition again after the Covid years, that we have been able to bring that continuity to our operations. Our team is made of real stars, they are always ready to go the extra mile for our customers"
DIVE.IS currently has almost 8000 reviews on Tripadvisor with the majority of them being 5 stars. The tour operator is also ranked #1 of 282 Outdoor Activities in Reykjavik.
DIVE.IS is a pioneer in dive and snorkeling trips in Iceland, with operations dating back 25 years. DIVE.IS is also the leading PADI 5-star Dive Center in Iceland, certifying most dry suit divers in Europe.
Tripadvisor is one of the world's largest travel guidance platforms, helping millions of people make travel plans. Travelers from all over the world use Tripadvisors' website and apps to discover where to stay, what to do and where to eat based on reviews from other travelers who have been there before.
Check out the full Best of the Best in the world list for Top Snorkeling and Water sports.
The DIVE.IS forest
12.11.2020 The DIVE.IS team has put the downtime caused by Covid-19 to good use. Several members of the Dive company went out on 11 June to plant trees and ended up planting a forest. The total area of planted trees is almost 3 hectares with the average planted trees per hectare being about 1200 trees. In total, the team planted 2365 Spruce trees and 1225 Aspen that day or a total of 3590 trees.
Types of trees bind different amounts of carbon. Aspen binds the most while birch binds the least amount.
Under the best conditions, a hectare of Aspen can bind about 20 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year, while spruce trees can produce 7-11 tonnes per hectare per year. We can therefore estimate that the binding of this planting can be around 27-30 tons of CO2 per year if all goes well.
According to the Icelandic Forest Service's (Skógræktin) website, planting trees can bind sandy and rugged areas rather fast. How fast depends on the type of tree used. Planting trees is one of the best ways we here in Iceland can help to bind carbon, ultimately to help the climate.
The DIVE team is committed to continue these types of socially responsible activities. Hopefully next year, we can continue to add to the DIVE.IS forest.
The brand new DIVE.IS Silfra blog
08.10.2020 We are proud to present our brand new Silfra blog.
Here we will be sharing information about diving and snorkeling in Iceland as well as other topics about traveling in Iceland that we find our diver and snorkeler community has questions about.
In the Iceland Guide topic, we will talk about traveling in Iceland in general and relating to snorkeling and diving specifically, for example our blog Things to do around Silfra for non-divers.
The Diving in Iceland topic will have information about all things related to scuba diving in Iceland.
And our Scuba Diving guide is for people that want to know more about diving in general.
We look forward to adding information to these topics and introducing new topics in the future so stay tuned. We hope you enjoy The Silfra Blog.
Cleaning up the beaches with Dive.is
29.05.2020 The diving and snorkeling company DIVE.IS has launched a project to clean up the coastline of Iceland. Fríða Líf, divemaster working with DIVE.IS, started the project with a small group of divers and non-divers who, with the support of the whole company, went to Garður on the national day of plocking, 15th of April.
Being the main dive site visited by the company on a daily basis, Silfra was selected to be cleaned up next. Divers were divided into groups to make sure every part of the site was covered. The operation also helped a lot with the collection of data and it was interesting to see where the most trash was collected.
While the divers covered Silfra, other staff, park rangers and volunteers were busy picking up garbage on the land surrounding Silfra to make sure that it won‘t make it out to Silfra, Þingvellir lake and then the ocean.
Park rangers regularly clean up the park, but still quite a lot of litter was found. The biggest group was plastic once again, with 453 pieces total. It was expected that lost scuba and snorkel gear would be prominent and it was indeed the second biggest plastic group with 82 pieces were found. 53 cigarette filters were collected as well and, for those who don’t know, they are made of plastic.
The second biggest group was quite a surprise: a total of 169 pieces of glass and ceramics, mostly small fragments that measured less than 5 cm.
Probably the weirdest thing we found was a great number of coins from many different countries. The coins are in Silfra because a lot of foreigners mistake Silfra for Peningjagjá (literally money fissure), a close-by rift that people have used as a wishing well for years.
One earring was also found.
„The day went amazingly. We are so grateful for the help of the rangers and all the volunteers“, says Fríða Líf on behalf of DIVE.IS. When the clean up was over, DIVE.IS was happy to invite everyone who joined the clean-up to a barbecue on the parking lot by Silfra, with reusable plates of course.
This is an ongoing project and upcoming clean-ups will be advertised on the company social media profiles:
DIVE.IS awarded highest honor by TripAdvisor for Silfra Snorkeling Tour
04.07.2019 This week, Icelandic tour operator DIVE.IS won the coveted TripAdvisor Travelers Choice award for 2019 in the experience category. The annual award is awarded to only 25 of the world's most interesting tourist experiences. They are ranked based on their ratings and number of reviews by travelers worldwide. The DIVE.IS snorkel trip to Silfra is in fourth place on the list, just behind other world-famous experiences such as a tour of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.
TripAdvisor is one of the world's largest travel platforms, helping 490 million people each month plan their trips. Travelers from all over the world use TripAdvisors' websites and apps to view and compare reviews, enabling them to select the best out of the 8 million hotels, restaurants, experiences, airlines and cruise ships.
"Over 200,000 experiences are listed on TripAdvisor and it is a great honor for us to be among the best in the world. This is the result of years of dedicated work by our DIVE.IS staff. We focus on quality services. Good service combined with the adventurous experience of snorkeling or diving in Silfra is what this award is recognising and we are really proud of this success. We also recently entered the TripAdvisor Hall of Fame for receiving the highest rating for five years in a row. It is our primary goal to create an unforgettable experience in the minds of those who join us on this adventure and this is now being recognized with continued five star reviews on TripAdvisor." says DIVE.IS CEO, Höskuldur Elefsen.
DIVE.IS has been in operation for over 22 years. It is a pioneer in dive and snorkeling trips in Iceland as well as being the leading PADI 5 star Dive Center, teaching the art of diving.
Read more about this on www.travelweekly.com.
