Iceland allows whaling for 2024 season, with restrictions on methods used

The last active whaling company had been waiting for a response since January, as its previous license had expired.

Iceland, one of three countries with Norway and Japan to authorize whaling, gave the green light for the 2024 season to this controversial practice, Tuesday June 11, to the country’s only whaler, Hvalur hf. The permit authorizes the hunting of 128 fin whales for the season which runs from mid-June to September, announced the Ministry of Fisheries and Food, less than the 161 authorized the previous season. This ensures that the decision was taken on the basis of the precautionary principle and that it “reflects the government’s increased emphasis on sustainable use of resources”.

This explanation is rejected by animal rights activists. “It is extremely disappointing” that the government “set aside the unequivocal scientific evidence demonstrating the brutality and cruelty of commercial whale slaughter by allowing whales to be killed for another year”reacted Adam Peyman, of the NGO Humane Society International, emphasizing that fin whales were threatened with extinction. “Iceland had the opportunity to make the right decision, and they chose not to.”

“The government’s own studies showed that whaling in Iceland was inherently cruel and unprofitable”, also declared the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). Hunting conditions for 2024 are identical to those of last year, Minister of Fisheries and Food Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdóttir told Icelandic media. “This decision does not necessarily correspond to my positions” but “I must follow the laws and regulations” Icelandic, she added. Contacted by AFP, the CEO of the hunting company Hvalur hf. Kristjan Loftsson did not wish to react.

Hvalur hf., the last whaling company active in Iceland, had been waiting since January for a response to its application for a whaling license for the next five years, its previous license having expired. In June 2023, Iceland suspended whaling after the publication of a government-commissioned report concluding that the hunting methods used did not comply with animal welfare law. Explosive harpoons used by hunters to catch the whales caused prolonged agonies, lasting up to five hours, the Government Veterinary Agency showed.

But the government authorized the resumption of hunting on September 1, with restrictions on the methods used and the presence of official inspectors on board, filming each cetacean catch. At the end of this shortened 2023 season, Hvalur announced that it had killed 24 whales. In the past, hunters have rarely reached quotas due to lack of markets. Especially since Japan, by far the main market for whale meat, resumed commercial whaling in 2019 after three decades of interruption.