Bucking the conservation trend, an Icelandic company intends to restart commercial fin whale hunting this season, raising the spectre of sanctions imposed by the United States.
Hvalur plans to use its quota of 154 whales, following a two-year break after its market in Japan was disrupted by the tsunami there. Japan is the predominant consumer of whale meat and one of only three countries still hunting these endangered mammals.
Iceland, Norway and Japan have chosen to ignore a global moratorium on whaling laid down by the International Whaling Commission in 1986. Iceland resumed whaling in 2006 but has come under intense international pressure to stop.
Chief Executive Kristjan Loftsson said Hvalur will commence in June and the meat would be exported to Japan. “Things are improving there… everything is recovering.”
“The quota is 154 whales plus some 20 per cent from last season possibly,” he added.
In 2010, Iceland fulfilled its quota at a time when President Obama had to personally intervene and back away from proposed sanctions, pressuring the government in Reykjavik instead.
Meanwhile, Japan continues to hunt a quota of some 1,000 whales in the open seas of the Antarctic Ocean, much to the chagrin of the Australian government, and has become the subject of Whale Wars, a TV documentary where urban eco warriors aboard the Sea Shepherd ships clash with whaling ships in an attempt to disrupt their activities.
The captain, Paul Watson, has so far not concerned himself with Icelandic whaling despite it being in the neighbourhood of this famous Canadian activist.
Iceland is a? barbaric country, recognized as one of the worst in crimes of global environmental terrorism. Iceland’s government continues to back the whale killing mafia Hvalur and its criminal director Loftsson who has committed crimes to the level of terrorism. These Iceland monsters are poaching our last endangered fin whales in defiance of world objections and shipping it to Japan for the pet food market or to force the mercury saturated poison on Japan’s schoolchildren ..since nobody..not even Iceland criminals..want to get sick from poached whale that’s saturated with PCB’s and toxic mercury.
Sorry Jak Crow but I know exactly what I am talking about. The IUCN lists 48 species and only 5 are endangered. And I don’t know of any type of math where 5 out of 48 is ‘Most’.
And the US has and uses a quota for Bowhead whales from the IWC. That quota allows 75 Bowhead whales a year to be struck with an average over the last 10 years of about 46 per year. And in July of 2012 the IWC extended the quota for the next 6 years.
So maybe you should do a little research into the truth and learn to use facts when making comments.
ddpalmer doesn’t know what he/she is talking about. Most whale species are endangered, and the U.S. no longer whales.
First most whale species aren’t endangered.
Second there are more than 3 countries that still hunt whales. Whales are hunted by the USA, Russia, Greenland adn St Vincent & The Grenadines. And that is just IWC members who still hunt whales. Countries that aren’t members of the IWC are not bound by the IWC regulations and can hunt all the whales they want and not make any reports. At least Canada and probably the Phillipines and Indonesia hunt whales.
Third Japan also hunts hundreds of whales in the North Pacific every year but that hunt has yet to be the subject of Sea Shepherds actions.
And lastly Sea Shpeherd and Paul Watson did briefly concern themselves with Icelandic whaling when in 1986 they damaged the processing facility and sank two of the whaling vessels.
[…] Nadat de Tsunami toesloeg in 2011 in Japan, kwam de walvisvaart stil te leggen. Een bedrijf uit IJsland is weer van plan om op walvisen te jagen, die voor comsumptie naar Japan zullen gaan. Er zijn nog 3 landen op Aarde die zich bezig houden met de jacht op deze dieren, en dat zijn Japan, Ijsland en Noorwegen. Op tv is tegenwoordig te zien hoe activisten hun leven op het spel zetten, bij het verdedigen van de walvis families. Het staat bekend als het programma Whalewars. https://www.icenews.is/2013/05/10/whale-hunting-to-resume-in-icelands-waters/ […]