24 August 2007 - Reykjavik,
Iceland — In a setback to the whaling industry
worldwide, Iceland's fisheries minister
has just announced he will not issue further
commercial whale-hunting quotas.
Iceland announced last year a return to
commercial whaling and a quota of 30 minke
whales and 9 fins. But with virtually no
market in Iceland and fears of contamination
making Japan unwilling to purchase North
Atlantic whale meat, the hunt has been a
disaster. Icelandic whalers have killed
only 7 minkes and 7 fin whales, haven't
made public the results of contamination
testing on the whale meat, and can't seem
to convince anyone to buy their product.
Reuters quotes the Icelandic minister as
saying "The whaling industry, like
any other industry, has to obey the market.
If there is no profitability there is no
foundation for resuming with the killing
of whales," he said.
The minister said he will not issue a new
quota until the market conditions for whale
meat improve and permission to export whale
products to Japan is secured.
Here's news, minister: there's no market
for the meat in Japan either. Japan is having
trouble selling the thousands of tonnes
of whale meat it already has in storage
from its own Southern Pacific "scientific"
hunt.
So while the minister's statement is short
of declaring an end to Icelandic whaling,
it is unlikely that market conditions for
whale meat are going to improve, and even
more unlikely that Japan will purchase the
meat.
Iceland conducts a separate "scientific"
hunt for minke whales. This was intended
to be a 2 year programme to hunt 200 whales,
begun in 2003. Yet with only one more month
of the 2007 whaling season left, the scientific
hunt is still 6 whales short of that quota,
despite four years of whaling.
Meat from this so called "scientific"
hunt also ends up on dinner tables, when
they can sell it.
While the Icelandic minister is recognising
the truth that there's simply no market
for the meat from the commercial hunt, he
might as well face up to another hard fact:
there's no legitimate scientific reason
for killing whales.
The Scientific Committee of the International
Whaling Commission (IWC) reviewed Iceland's
scientific programme, and decided not to
support it. Whale experts around the world
have demonstrated viable alternatives to
lethal research which makes killing whales
for science unnecessary.
Scientific whaling is just commercial whaling
through a loophole. In the absence of either
a scientific or commercial rationale, Iceland
should simply announce an end to whaling.
There's a good economic reason for Iceland
to do so. Sparing the six minkes remaining
in the scientific quota could earn Icelandic
tourism a bonus of $US116.9 million from
the 112,000 Greenpeace supporters worldwide
who have pledged to consider a visit to
Iceland if whaling stops.
All the minister has to do is announce
he's hanging up the harpoons.
