Iceland grants whaling license for 2024 season June 12, 2024

Whale meat for sale at a market in Shimonoseki, Japan - the country has drastically reduced its imports from Iceland (Yuichi YAMAZAKI)

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Iceland grants whaling license for 2024 season

Iceland's government said Tuesday that it had granted a license to hunt 128 fin whales to the country's only whaling company, amid widespread criticism of the practice.

Iceland, Norway, and Japan are the only three countries that allow commercial whaling, despite strong opposition from animal rights activists.

In January, Hvalur, the only whaling group left in Iceland, applied for a five-year permit to hunt whales after its license expired.

Another company hung up its harpoons for good in 2020, saying it was no longer profitable.

The government said in a statement that the new permit would be valid for the 2024 season and would allow the hunting of 128 fin whales - the second longest-lived marine mammal after the blue whale - compared to 161 whales the previous year.

“This decision is in line with the 2017 advice from the Institute of Marine and Freshwater Research and considers the International Whaling Commission's conservative ecosystem factors,” the government said.

“It is based on a precautionary approach and reflects the government's increased emphasis on the sustainable use of resources,” it added.

Whaling in Iceland usually takes place between mid-June and September.

With the new license, 99 whales can be hunted in the Greenland/West Iceland region and 29 whales in the East Iceland/Faroe Island region, the government said.

On June 20, 2023, the country suspended whaling for two months after an inquiry commissioned by the government concluded that the methods used did not comply with animal welfare laws.

Monitoring by the government's veterinary agency showed that the explosive harpoons used by the hunters to capture the whales were causing prolonged agony, with the hunt lasting up to five hours after they had been harpooned.

- 'Shameful' -

In October, Hvalur said that the shortened 2023 season, which lasted just three weeks, had ended with 24 dead whales.

Whalers had struggled in the past to meet quotas.

It was unclear whether Food and Agriculture Minister Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdottir would grant a permit for the 2024 season, and the charity Humane Society International called on Iceland to “end this unnecessary cruelty once and for all”.

“It is devastatingly disappointing that Minister Gunnarsdottir has brushed aside the unequivocal scientific evidence demonstrating the brutality and cruelty of commercial whale killing and allowed whales to be killed for another year,” Adam Peyman of Humane Society International told AFP, calling the decision “a shameful new entry in the conservation history books”.

“Whales already face a myriad of threats in the oceans from pollution, climate change, entanglement in fishing nets and ship attacks, and fin whales victimized by Iceland's whaling fleet are considered globally vulnerable to extinction,” Peyman added.

Hvalur's CEO, Kristjan Loftsson, did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.

According to a poll carried out last June by the Maskina Institute, 51% of Icelanders oppose whaling, up from 42% in a poll carried out four years earlier.

Iceland has depended heavily on fishing and whaling for centuries.

But in the last two decades, its tourism sector, including whale-watching tours, has flourished.

Japan, by far the largest market for whale meat, resumed commercial whaling in 2019 after a three-decade hiatus, drastically reducing Iceland's need for imports.

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