• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Iceland Issues New Permits To Kill Up To 426 Fin And Minke Whales A Year

December 6, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Iceland has issued a new five-year license to hunt hundreds of whales in their waters each year, boldly reaffirming its controversial stance on whaling.

The Icelandic Ministry of Food and Agriculture announced this week it had granted licenses that allow annual catches of 209 fin whales and 217 minke whales during the whaling season, which runs from June to September. The permits are granted for five years with annual extensions, allowing up to 20 percent of unused quotas to roll over. 

Advertisement

The license for fin whales was given to Hvalur hf, the largest Icelandic commercial whaling company, while the minke whales can be hunted by a trawler owned by Tjaldtangi ehf. 

Fin whales are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Measuring up to 25 meters (85 feet) in length, they are the second-largest animal on Earth in terms of length, second only to the blue whale. 

Minke whales are the smallest of the “great whales”, measuring around 7 to 9 meters (22 to 29 feet) in length. Although they are not at risk of extinction, there are serious ethical concerns about the way they are hunted, as with fin whales.

The Icelandic government noted that the “exploitation of living marine resources in Iceland is under strict constraints” and the total catch allowance followed the advice of the Marine Research Institute which is based on assessments by the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Council. 

Advertisement

Reacting to the news, environmentalists and animal welfare groups described the decision as a “disaster for conservation” and suggested it was a slippery move from Iceland’s outgoing conservative government.

“Iceland has just issued a license to kill. The few wealthy whalers of the country continue to exert their influence even in the dying hours of this interim government. This government should simply be holding the fort, but instead it has made a highly controversial and rushed decision – a five-year license for both fin and minke whales is a disaster for whales and a disaster for conservation,” Sharon Livermore, Director of Marine Conservation Programmes at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said in a statement sent to IFLScience.

“Studies have shown that whaling is inherently cruel. There is simply no ethical way to kill a whale at sea.”

Just a few years ago, it looked like Iceland was going to abandon its controversial whaling policy but that no longer appears to be the case.

Advertisement

In June 2023, Icelandic authorities stopped the year’s whaling season one day before it was supposed to start by suspending the hunting of fin whales until the end of summer. The snap decision came after a damning report published by the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority suggested whaling often results in the animals suffering long, agonizing deaths, and may break the country’s animal welfare laws.

However, in June 2024, the government revealed it was giving the whaling company Hvalur hf a license to kill 99 fin whales in the Greenland/West Iceland region, as well as 29 whales in the East Iceland/Faroe Islands region.

Along with Iceland, only two other countries — Norway and Japan — continue to practice commercial whaling, defying the global moratorium established by the International Whaling Commission in 1986 despite international backlash.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Two UK tech figures plan to row the Atlantic for charity supporting minority entrepreneurs
  2. Microsoft now more focused on ‘killing Zoom’ than Slack, says Stewart Butterfield
  3. Taiwan central bank says currency stable, flags more modest intervention
  4. Growing Bones And Gut Feelings: The Latest Steps On The Quest To Map Every Human Cell

Source Link: Iceland Issues New Permits To Kill Up To 426 Fin And Minke Whales A Year

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Watch This Funky Sea Pig Dancing Its Way Through The Deep Sea, Over 2,300 Meters Below The Surface
  • NASA Lets YouTuber Steve Mould Test His “Weird Chain Theory” In Space
  • The Oldest Stalagmite Ever Dated Was Found In Oklahoma Rocks, Dating Back 289 Million Years
  • 2024’s Great American Eclipse Made Some Birds Behave In Surprising Ways, But Not All Were Fooled
  • “Carter Catastrophe”: The Math Equation That Predicts The End Of Humanity
  • Why Is There No Nobel Prize For Mathematics?
  • These Are The Only Animals Known To Incubate Eggs In Their Stomachs And Give “Birth” Out Their Mouths
  • Constipated? This One Fruit Could Help, Says First-Ever Evidence-Led Diet Guidance
  • NGC 2775: This Galaxy Breaks The Rules Of “Galactic Evolution” And Baffles Astronomers
  • Meet The “Four-Eyed” Hirola, The World’s Most Endangered Antelope With Fewer Than 500 Left
  • The Bizarre 1997 Experiment That Made A Frog Levitate
  • There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
  • Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
  • There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
  • Why Do Trains Not Have Seatbelts? It’s Probably Not What You Think
  • World’s Driest Hot Desert Just Burst Into A Rare And Fleeting Desert Bloom
  • Theoretical Dark Matter Infernos Could Melt The Earth’s Core, Turning It Liquid
  • North America’s Largest Mammal Once Numbered 60 Million – Then Humans Nearly Drove It To Extinction
  • North America’s Largest Ever Land Animal Was A 21-Meter-Long Titan
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version