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Charity No. 1014705

2010-04-20

Iceland's Minke Whale Hunt About To Start

The Icelandic Minke Whalers Association is reporting that the first whaling vessel is getting ready to sail, perhaps as early as this week.  According to a news release on the association's website, the Drofn RE is hoping to be  the first minke whale boat of the season to begin whaling.  Another minke whaling boat, the Halldor Sigurdsson, is making preparations for the hunt, although that vessel is waiting to see how the weather is before sailing.

Although the Fisheries Ministry has issued a quota for 200 minke whales for 2010, 81 minke whales were killed in 2009.

The hunt comes at a time when Iceland's research community is beginning to question a report recently released by Fisheries Ministry on the economic impacts of whaling.  Hilmar Malmquist, a curator at Iceland's Natural History Museum in Kopavgaur, has said that the report --which claimed that whaling could be economically beneficial to Iceland's economy -- is "badly written and lacks scientific credibility."  Malmquist pointed in particular to the report's statements regarding the need to cull whales to protect fish stocks, saying that the basis for this claim is an outdated fisheries model that has been rejected as being too simplistic.

Joining Malmquist in his concerns is noted Icelandic biologist Arnthor Gardarsson, professor emeritus at the University of Iceland.  In a strongly worded opinion piece for the Icelandic website Visir, Gardarson slammed the report for its heavy bias in favor of the whaling industry, and also cited the poor science involved in the "whales eat fish" elements of the report, calling it an "over-simplification" of the issue. 

sources: Icelandic Minke Whalers Association IPS News Visir


 


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