Bad News: Iceland to Re-start Whaling This Summer

By Mark J. Palmer

The richest man in Iceland, Kristján Loftsson, has announced his whaling company will go back to killing fin whales – many fin whales – this summer after a hiatus of two-and-one-half years.

Whaling will begin in June and end in September. Whales will be flensed and processed in his plants in Iceland. There is little market for whale meat in Iceland, but expect Loftsson to attempt to export whale meat to Japan and Norway.

The delay in whaling, according to Loftsson, was caused by a dispute with the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST), which wanted whales to be cut up under a roof, instead of in the open. Loftsson is planning to continue cutting up his whales in the open. He has, through his lucrative fishing companies and investments, considerable political clout in Iceland.

Quotas for whaling allow 209 fin whales to be killed each year, and since no whaling was conducted last year, 42 additional whales might be killed this year.

IMMP suspects the fin whale population numbers used to justify the hunts are inflated by fisheries officials kowtowing to the whaling industry.

Just a few months ago, Iceland’s Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, wrote in an op-ed for the publication Morgunblaðið that whaling was likely to end for that country in 2024. She indicated she thought the government permits should not be renewed for whaling at that time.

Whale meat consumption has often been promoted as a novelty food for tourists in Iceland, but a fifteen-year campaign (“Meet Us, Don’t Eat Us”) by whale watching companies and Icelanders opposed to the hunts has helped turn tourists away from buying whale meat and instead go on cruises to see the live whales in their natural habitat. Few Icelanders eat whale meat.

A move to cut off whaling permits in Iceland would leave Japan and Norway as the last two countries conducting commercial whaling. However, given the clout of Mr. Loftsson, it is not clear what will happen in the coming months.

Commercial whaling is largely unsustainable and un-economic, unless practiced ruthlessly against whale populations, resulting in declines in numbers and near extinction for many species. Today, some of those species are recovering.

But the fin whale, subject of Farley Mowat’s haunting book A Whale for the Killing, remains a vulnerable species still listed as an endangered species by the US and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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