Iceland to Hunt 250 Whales a Year

On Tuesday, the day after Iceland's coalition government resigned, outgoing Fisheries Minister Einar Gudfinsson issued the new whaling quotas.

In a brief announcement of the new quotas, Gudfinsson said the total allowable takes of fin and minke whales for the next five years will be according to scientific recommendations of the Icelandic Marine Research Institute.

For the years 2009 until 2013, Iceland has set the annual quotas for 150 endangered fin whales and 100 minke whales, which are not classed as endangered.

In 2006 Iceland resumed whaling of fin and minke whales. Last year, whalers were permitted to hunt nine fin whales and 40 minke whales.

An endangered fin whale is brought to the harbor of Hvalfjörour, Iceland in 2006. The whale was the first kill marking the resumption of the country's commercial whaling. (Photo courtesy Greenpeace)

Sue Fisher, policy director for the UK based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said, "WDCS assumes that Iceland's decision to resume large scale commercial whaling is a desperate attempt to secure income from sales to Japan. Given the status of the government, it is not clear if the Fisheries minister even has the authority to do this, nor is it clear that there is a market for whale meat."

"It is a sad day for whales that they now become the latest potential victims of the world economic crisis and we have not seen a hunt of this scale in the North Atlantic since the 1980s," said Fisher. "And there is still a moratorium in place."

Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson, managing director of the Association of Minke Whale Hunters, said January 9 that his members were hopeful that the Ministry of Fisheries would issue a quota for 200, even 400, minkes next season, up from 40 last year.

"Then we only hunted for the local market but now we are thinking of selling 90 percent of the meat to Japan. Demand is certainly there; we could easily sell the meat from 1,000 animals if we had the permission to hunt them," Jonsson told the "Frettabladid" newspaper.

Fisher said the timing of the announcement, coming as it does after the dissolution of the Icelandic government late Monday, calls into question the legality of the whaling quotas.

"WDCS calls on the interim government to immediately reject the ex-Minister's ploy," she said.

Meanwhile, discussions on the formation of a minority government between the Social Democrats and the Left-Greens are underway and are expected to conclude tonight or tomorrow.

President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson has requested that the outgoing government remains in office until a new government is formed.

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