Neither fin whales nor minke whales to be killed off Iceland this summer

Last week, it was reported that once again Iceland would not be hunting fin whales this year. Kristjan Loftsson, the man behind the killing, gave several reasons for his decision.

One reason is that since Japan started to allow commercial whaling in 2018 rather than “research whaling”, the Japanese government now subsidizes Japanese whaling ships, which makes it difficult for Loftsson to compete commercially (plus of course he has to get the whale meat to Japan via a circuitous route as so few ports are willing to allow him in).

Loftsson also says that the Japanese have stricter requirements for chemical analysis for Icelandic whale meat than for their own whale meat.

But he also sees potential problems when processing the meat due to COVID-19. He says that the work involves staff working near each other. If one of his employees becomes infected with the coronavirus, all the others will have to go into quarantine for two weeks, which means it will be impossible to cut up the dead whales, etc. He actually has faced legal action for carrying out whale processing in the open air, but has wangled his way out of it.

Although he will not be killing more whales this year, Loftsson still intends to carry on with the university-based research on making gelatin out of whale bones, an iron-rich supplement for people suffering from anaemia, and using whale blubber for medicinal purposes and food production.

On 2018, 146 fin whales and 6 minke whales were killed off Iceland.

The minke whalers basically gave up in 2018, as  their main hunting grounds near Reykjavik had become a whaling sanctuary. That year, they stopped soon after they started.

Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson, who runs the company IP-útgerð that ran the minke-whaling operation, said this week that he does not envisage doing any more minke whaling.

Ironically, a report was produced last year by Iceland’s Institute of Economic Studies which concluded that whaling in Iceland would be profitable. That report was, however, subject to heavy criticism for the assumptions made.

 

Whales to be killed commercially in Japan but not Iceland

Well, as some of the workers at the whaling station in Iceland intimated last year, Kristjan Loftsson has decided not to kill fin whales this year. One excuse given was somewhat feeble – they received permission to kill whales too late and it was thus too late to organise everything – but the main reason was that they couldn’t sell the meat that they’d sent to Japan.

The minke whalers have also decided to hunt for sea cucumbers rather than whales this year, apparently “because it suits us better”. They abandoned whaling last year early on in the season. They will import minke whale meat from Norway this year to meet customer requirements. Is anyone protesting whaling in Norway?

This is the first time in 17 years that no whaling of any kind will be happening in Iceland.

Neither Kristjan Loftsson’s company Hvalur hf. nor the minke whale outfit IP-utgerd have excluded the possibility of whaling next year.  But this year at least the whales are safe.

The decision by the two companies provides even more rationale for the fact that the report commissioned by the Icelandic government on whaling was not accurate. The authors said that both minke whaling and fin whaling should be profitable, although they acknowledged that fin whaling wasn’t profitable between and including 2014 and 2017, much of the proceeds going on wages and transport to Japan.

And the minke whalers only caught 17 and 6 minke whales in 2017 and 2018 respectively, which can hardly be profitable. Indeed, the minke whaling company has gone bust more than once.

Some whales are not safe, though. Japan started commercial whaling this morning for the first time in 31 years, with quotas for 52 minke whales, 25 sei whales and 15 Bryde’s whales – 225 whales in total. Some whales have already been caught. According to a report in Japan Times, “the quota was calculated on the basis that it would not adversely impact stocks even if Japan kept hunting the whales for 100 years”. Good grief! 100 years!!!

They intend to kill the whales in nearby waters and in their exclusive economic zone but not in the Antarctic, where they have actually killed more whales annually than are allowed now. Last year, Nanami Kurasawa from the Japanese group IKAN told me that the stopping of “research whaling” in the Antarctic and Southern Hemisphere would mean that Japan would have to give up 333 minke whales from Antarctica, 134 sei whales and 43 minke whales from the North West Pacific. Distributors were worried, she said.

Nevertheless, whale meat consumption in Japan has dropped from over 200,000 tonnes in the 1960s to around 5,000 tonnes last year.

Opposition to whaling mounts in Iceland

The first fin whaling boats were expected to leave Reykjavik harbour today, but for undisclosed reasons their departure has been delayed a week. That didn’t stop a demonstration from happening in front of one of the whaling boats at Reykjavik harbour at lunchtime today. The demonstration, organized at short notice by the Icelandic Vegan & Vegetarian Society (Samtökin grænmetisæta), Vegan Organization (Vegan samtökin), Earth Friends (Jarðarvinur) and Hard to Port, a German activist group, was well attended, with about 40-50 people. Hard to Port will arrive in Iceland in a few days time and will stay all summer, so more demonstrations can be expected. No doubt there will also be a demonstration at the whaling station in Hvalfjordur when the first fin whale is brought back to land.

A possible reason for the delay is that one of the two whaling boats owned by the fin whaling company Hvalur is currently on a nearby slipway. The man behind the fin whaling, Kristjan Loftsson, usually has two boats out at a time.

Although fin whales are being spared at the moment, the same is not true for minke whales as the man behind that enterprise, Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson from IP útgerð, announced last week that their boat Hrafnreyður would start minke whaling last Thursday.  Given that they only caught 17 whales last year, out of a quota of over 200, Jonsson says he’s not sure if the venture is going to pay. I’m sure it won’t.

In a survey on attitudes to whaling carried out by MMR in late April/early May, 34% said they were very opposed or fairly opposed to whaling starting again (fin whaling did not happen in 2016 or 2017), 34% were pro-whaling and 31% said they were neither opposed or supportive of it.  Obviously opinions are very divided, yet opposition is growing as a 2007 survey carried out by Capacent for the Iceland Nature Conservation Association and IFAW in early October, 2007, disclosed that 66.3% agreed with the decision of the outgoing Fisheries Minister of the time, Einar K. Gudfinsson, to allow fin whaling to recommence, 22.6% said they were against it, and only 11.1% said they were neutral about it.

Update, 11 June: The first minke whale has been caught.

Update, 24 July: Minke whaling has stopped. They’ve given up, having caught 6 whales. See this article I wrote for more about opposition to whaling.

More problems for Icelandic minke whaling company

The only company that was hunting minke whales last year off Iceland, IP Utgerd, has been reprimanded by the Directorate of Fisheries for bypassing the weighing of the majority of the minke whales they caught last season. Out of the 24 whales they caught, 14 were not recorded. The man behind the company concerned, Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson, says that whales are recorded by number caught rather than weight, and that after years of scientific whaling the weight of minke whales should be known. They say they notify the Directorate electronically as soon as a whale is killed. Apparently the unwanted parts of a minke whale are discarded at sea, and only the meat and blubber are brought to land.

If the company bypasses the weighing machine once more within the next two years, they will have their licence retracted. Which could mean that no more minke whales would be caught.

In point of fact, IP Utgerd only utilized 10% of their quota, as they were allowed to hunt 240 whales. Consequently, they have had to import minke whale meat from Norway to supply restaurants and the like within Reykjavik.

UPDATE: Apparently, Japan had to destroy whale meat it got from Norway last year because it contained excessive levels of insecticide. No one thought of testing the Norwegian whale meat imported to Iceland for insecticide, and there is no guarantee that any remaining meat – if there is any – will be tested now.