Iceland's government gives green light to resume commercial whaling

Commercial whaling resumed in Icelandic waters on Friday following a two- month ban imposed over concerns for animal welfare.

Annual quotas in Iceland authorise the killing of 217 minke whales. FILES/AFP

"Whaling can resume with detailed and stricter requirements for hunting equipment and hunting methods as well as increased supervision," the fisheries ministry said in a statement.

 Animal protection groups hit out at the decision. Humane Society International (HSI) said the fisheries minister Svandis Svavarsdottir had made an inexplicable decision.

"Minister Svavarsdottir has dismissed the unequivocal scientific evidence that she herself commissioned, demonstrating the brutality and cruelty of commercial whale killing," said Ruud Tombrock, HSI's  executive director for Europe.

"There is simply no way to make harpooning whales at sea anything other than cruel and bloody, and no amount of modifications will change that," added Tombruck.

Permission

Iceland, Norway and Japan are the only countries that allow commercial whaling. But Iceland suspended its whale hunt on 20 June after a government-commissioned report concluded the hunt does not comply with the country's Animal Welfare Act.

Monitoring by Iceland's Food and Veterinary Authority on the fin whale hunt found that the killing of the animals took too long based on the main objectives of the Animal Welfare Act.

Video clips broadcast by the veterinary authority showed a whale's agony as it was hunted for five hours.

Iceland suspended hunting fin whales in 2016 due to a declining market for whale meat. Hunting resumed for the 2018 season when 146 fin whales were killed.

Icelandic whalers killed a single minke whale between 2019 and 2021, and 148 fin whales in 2022.

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Annual quotas authorise the killing of 209 fin whales – the second-longest marine mammal after the blue whale – and 217 minke whales, one of the smallest species.

"Whales already face myriad threats in the oceans from pollution, climate change, entanglement in fish nets and ship strikes," said Tombruck.

"With the need for whale protection so critical. this is a devastating rejection of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to end the slaughter at sea.

"There is a new shameful entry in the conservation history books, Iceland had a chance to do the right thing and it chose not to.”