The Icelandic government announced on Tuesday it was suspending whaling until the end of August in the name of animal welfare, implying that the controversial practice is coming to an end in the country.
Animal rights groups and environmentalists hailed the decision, with Humane Society International calling it “a major turning point in the compassionate conservation of whales.”
“I have made the decision to temporarily stop whaling” until August 31, Iceland’s food minister Svandis Svavarsdóttir said after issuing a government-commissioned report concluding that hunting these marine mammals is not in line with Icelandic whaling law. welfare.
A report by the country’s veterinary authorities highlights that the killing of cetaceans took a long time, with videos recently released by the authorities showing the shocking agony of a whale taken last year that lasted five hours.
“If the government and licensees [de caça] cannot guarantee the requirements of comfort, this activity has no future,” the minister added.
The fishing license of the country’s last operating hunting society, Khvalur, expires in 2023 and has already announced that this season will be its last due to falling fishing profits.
The whaling season in Iceland runs from mid-June to mid-September, but activity is unlikely to resume after August 31 this year.
Annual quotas allow the shooting of 209 fin whales – the second longest marine mammal after the blue whale – and 217 pygmy whales.
But catches have declined significantly in recent years due to falling demand for whale meat.
“There is no ‘humane’ way to kill a whale at sea and therefore we are calling on the Minister to make the ban permanent,” Ruud Tombrok, director of Humane Society International, said in a statement.
“Whales already face so many serious threats in the oceans from pollution, climate change, entanglement in fishing nets and collisions with ships that ending the cruel commercial whaling is the only ethical solution,” he continued.
For Robert Reid, director of Sea Shepherd UK, the decision is also a “hard blow” for other whaling countries: “If whaling cannot be done humanely here (…), it cannot be done humanely anywhere,” he said. .
“Whales are the architects of the ocean. They help increase biodiversity, help fight global warming by intervening in the carbon cycle,” he added.
In Iceland, the majority of the population is now against this practice: 51% of Icelanders are against it, shows a poll conducted by the Maskin Institute, the results of which were published in early June.
Iceland, Norway and Japan are the only countries where whaling is still allowed.