Iceland hunting endangered whales

Recently

Despite worldwide outcry and a ban on whaling in place since 1986, Iceland, like Japan, continues to kill whales using cruel methods, saying itâ€™s for â€œscientificâ€ purposes. But now the government of Iceland has gone even further, launching a commercial whale hunt for the first time in more than two decades. Permits have been granted by Icelandâ€™s Ministry of Fisheries for the hunting of 30 minke whales and nine endangered fin whales. In fact, whaling ships have already killed their first two endangered fin whales.

Yet few Icelanders eat whale meat regularly (only 1.1% of Icelanders say they eat whale meat once a week or more*); and there is limited, if any, world market for the meat. A growing number of jobs in Iceland also depend on the countryâ€™s thriving whale-watching industry.

Watch the latest video of Icelandâ€™s cruel killing of endangered fin whales. Warning: Video contains graphic footage that may not be suitable for all viewers.

Itâ€™s quite rare for Icelandâ€™s embassy to receive an outpouring of public comments on a political issue. Thatâ€™s why itâ€™s not too late to have an impact!
Please send a polite message today to protest Icelandâ€™s terrible decision to resume commercial whale hunting.

*Gallup Poll, 2006

This entry was posted by } bird { on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 3:00 pm and is filed under blogalog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Comments

TiNs says:

October 27, 2006 at 2:57 pm

Sent

nathan says:

October 28, 2006 at 6:05 pm

Hmmm… I’m more of a tree hugger than a Save the Whales type….and the video wasn’t that gruesome, they didn’t show the thing dying, just being cut up.

And according to Wikipedia there are about 1 million minke whales in the world. Doesn’t seem like “endangered” sounding numbers to me.

And yes, I think it’s sad that anything should have to die as well, but the story just seems a bit one sided. There’s some reason that they’re whaling, I can’t imagine that it’s just for fun.

olivia says:

October 28, 2006 at 7:03 pm

Personally Im glad the video didnt show the animal suffering, but it was clear to see by the wounds and harpoon how incredibly painful it must have been. Sometimes it takes up to an hour for the whale to die from continuous injuries. In this day and age we dont need to be shooting explosive harpoons into the oceans gentlest creatures for “scientific purposes”. Its a load of bull.

According to Wikipedia the IUCN list the northern species as Lower Risk/Near Threatened and the southern as Lower Risk/Conservation dependent. They probably know what they’re talking about.

In just 100 years 116,568 Minke Whales have been killed by whalers. Roughly 10% of a million if your figures are correct.