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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: September 2007

Iceland halts commercial whaling

 

REYKJAVIK--Iceland fisheries minister Einar K Guofinnsson on September 3, 2007 announced that Iceland will not issue new commercial whaling quotas.

Iceland in 2006 joined Norway in unilaterally defying the 21-year-old Inter-national Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial whaling by issuing itself permits to kill 30 minke whales and nine endangered fin whales. Anticipating a market in Japan for whale meat, Icelandic fishers killed seven minke whales and seven fin whales, but were unable to get permission to export the meat.

"There is no reason to continue commercial whaling if there is no demand for the product," Guofinnsson said.

Iceland, like Japan, has sustained a remnant whaling industry despite the IWC moratorium by authorizing whalers to hunt in the name of research. Iceland issued "scientific whaling" permits to kill 38 minke whales in 2003, 25 in 2004, 39 in 2005, and 60 in 2006--far below the Japanese toll of 6,795 whales killed in research whaling since 1987.