Undermining international opinion on whaling

It’s been reported that, after a gap of 20 years, Iceland and Norway may have resumed the export of fin and minke whale meat to Japan. These countries continue to blatantly defy the International Whaling Commission’s ban on commercial whaling, and any trade in whale meat also undermines the ban on trading in whale products under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
It also makes absolutely no sense. In all three countries the demand for whale meat is small and declining, and there are stock piles of unwanted whalemeat.

Commercial whaling annihilated fin whales and other species of whales in the 20th Century, and as slow-growing, long-lived species, whales can never recover quickly from over-exploitation. Moreover, the fin whale is still officially an endangered species and Japan’s own recent whaling efforts in the Southern Ocean failed to find any fin whales to kill!

Last month, we exposed Japanese crew members stealing whale meat from their ‘scientific’ programme and the latest whale exports only seem to show that the Government of Japan will go to any lengths to keep the commercial whaling industry alive. Ironically Japan has previously considered North Atlantic whales to be too toxic to eat, as they were found to have abnormally high mercury and dioxin levels.

Iceland’s fisheries minister had announced in 2007 that he would not issue further commercial whale-hunting quotas effectively ending the country’s whaling programme. And in 2008 Iceland’s foreign minister expressed her opposition to continued whaling by her country.

If whale meat is being exported from Iceland it makes no economic sense either. Iceland has a truly sustainable alternative in whale-watching, an industry that has grown 500% in the last decade. Whales are worth much more alive than dead.