Environment

First Fin Whales Killed in Iceland

by Barbara McPherson | June 24, 2009 at 09:52 am

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The first two of up to 150 fin whales were killed in Iceland on Friday. The whaling station at Hvalfordur, Iceland is active and preparing to receive more of the endangered fin whales as part of a five year whaling programme. The Icelandic whalers are also hunting and killing minke whales, ironically in the same area that tourists are paying to see them on whale watching tours.

The whales were killed on Friday morning, just days before the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meetings begin in Madeira, Portugal. The start of the hunt was clearly intended to deride efforts to modernise the Commission and stop the needless slaughter of whales.

While permission to hunt and kill whales was given by the former Icelandic government, the present one has done nothing to stop the killing. According to Greenpeace there is no domestic market for whale meat in Iceland and the Japanese market has dried up.

We recently showed that this is absolute hogwash, when we released audio and an English transcript of a very interesting conversation we had with the Japanese trader who imported fin and minke whale meat from Iceland and Norway last year. The head of the Asia Trading Company in Tokyo told us very clearly that he will not take any more in the future, because there is no market for the whale meat in Japan. In fact, he only took it last year as a favour to Loftsson because he is a friend.