Iceland Grants License to Kill Vulnerable Fin Whales

Iceland has granted a 2024 whaling license to its one remaining whaling company, Hvalur hf., according to the government, drawing criticism from whale protection advocates.

The company will be allowed to kill 99 fin whales in West Iceland and Greenland and 29 of the gigantic mammals in East Iceland and the Faroe Islands, the fisheries ministry said, as Reuters reported.

“It’s ridiculous that in 2024 we’re talking about target lists for the second-largest animal on Earth, for products that nobody needs,” Patrick Ramage, director of International Fund for Animal Welfare, told Reuters.

In Iceland, the whaling season is from the middle of June to late September. Most of the whale meat is sold to Japan.

Fin whales are listed as a “vulnerable” species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List of Threatened Species.

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Other than humans, fin whales’ only known natural predator are killer whales, the International Whaling Commission said.

Animal rights groups called the announcement “deeply disappointing,” reported The Guardian.

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After Japan, Iceland is the second nation to allow the continuation of fin whaling this year.

During the mid-1900s, the whaling industry killed almost 725,000 fin whales in the Southern Hemisphere, NOAA Fisheries said. Though their numbers have improved and are said to be increasing since hunting bans were implemented by many countries during the 1970s, they are nowhere near what they once were.

Other threats to fin whales include vessel strikes, climate change, fishing gear entanglement, noise pollution and lack of prey from overfishing.

A recent report by the food and veterinary authority of Iceland, Mast, said no significant improvement had been made to the animal welfare status of whale hunts last year compared with 2022, despite new regulations, The Guardian reported.

“It’s hard to fathom how and why this green light to kill 128 fin whales is being given,” Ramage said. “There is clearly no way to kill a whale at sea without inflicting unthinkable cruelty.”

The Mast report found that some whales who had been harpooned did not die for two hours. The report questioned if the hunting of large whales would ever be able to meet animal welfare standards.

“It is unbelievable and deeply disappointing that the Icelandic government has granted [this], defying extensive scientific and economic evidence against such actions,” said Luke McMillan, an anti-whaling activist with Whale and Dolphin Conservation, as reported by The Guardian.

On June 20 of last year, Iceland instituted a two-month suspension on whaling after a government-commissioned inquiry found that the hunting methods being used did not meet animal welfare laws, AFP reported.

In October, Hvalur said 24 whales had been killed during the shortened three-week whaling season.

Whether Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdottir, Iceland’s food, fisheries and agriculture minister, would grant a whale hunting license for this year’s season had been unclear.

“It is devastatingly disappointing that Minister Gunnarsdottir has set aside unequivocal scientific evidence demonstrating the brutality and cruelty of commercial whale killing and allowed whales to be killed for another year,” Adam Peyman, wildlife programs director for Humane Society International, told AFP.

“Whales already face myriad threats in the oceans from pollution, climate change, entanglement in fish nets and ship strikes, and fin whale victims of Iceland’s whaling fleet are considered globally vulnerable to extinction,” added Peyman.