The Icelandic government has granted a whaling license to commercial whaling company Hvalur, despite previously suspending its operations due to animal welfare concerns.

On June 11, the government announced that Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdóttir, Iceland’s minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, had granted a license for the 2024 whaling season, permitting Hvalur to hunt 99 vulnerable fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) in the waters around Greenland and West Iceland. The license also permits the hunting of 29 whales in the waters around East Iceland and the Faroe Islands, but experts say it’s unlikely Hvalur will sail its whaling vessels to this region.

Kristján Loftsson, the CEO of Hvalur, actually requested a 5- or 10-year whaling license in his application that he submitted to the Icelandic government in January. However, the license he ultimately received will only allow his company to whale for the remainder of 2024 without a possibility of renewal.

In June 2023, the Icelandic government suspended Hvalur’s whaling operations after a 2022 report conducted by the Icelandic government’s Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST) found that many whales suffer immensely after being harpooned. However, the ban was lifted in September of the same year, and Loftsson recommenced whaling for several weeks. Hvalur’s license subsequently expired in 2023, prompting speculation about whether whaling would continue in the Nordic nation.

In his application, Loftsson stated in Icelandic that his company would continue to invest in, develop and refine its hunting equipment and fishing methods to improve animal welfare standards.

Mongabay reached out to Loftsson for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Árni Finnsson of the Iceland Nature Conservation Association said this is the first time the Icelandic government has granted a license that only lasted for a year, and that the whaling quota was below what it had been in previous years.

“This decision is not good, but it’s not nearly as bad as it could have been,” Finnsson told Mongabay.

However, Finnsson lamented that the Icelandic government made its decision without consulting the international community.

“It violates the moratorium on whaling,” Finnsson said in reference to the 1982 decision by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to pause global commercial whaling activities. “Iceland is, in name only, a member of the IWC and they are doing as they wish.”

Patrick Ramage, a senior director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare whose work focuses on protecting whales, called the Icelandic government’s decision to grant a license to Hvalur “absolutely ridiculous.”

“It’s astonishing that in 2024, we’d still be talking about declaring quotas for someone to put to sea and harpoon the second-largest animal on Earth for products that nobody needs,” Ramage told Mongabay.

Ramage said he believes Minister Gunnarsdóttir’s decision was largely grounded in the fact that Iceland has “no provision for legally ending whaling.” However, he pointed out that former Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir previously established a committee to review the legal basis for whaling and that the committee is set to meet in October of this year.

“There are clear signs that Icelandic whaling is in its death throes,” Ramage said.

This year, the Icelandic government received a second application from whaler Þórður Steinar Lárusson to hunt minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) on the ship Deilir GK. However, the government has not yet made any decision on this application.

Iceland isn’t the only nation that is continuing to whale. Japan recently announced that it will start hunting fin whales in addition to other whale species, and on Tuesday, it said it will self-allocate a quota of 59 fin whales for the 2024 hunt. Japan is also preparing a colossal “mother ship” to assist with its controversial whaling operations in the Southern Ocean.

Norway is another country that continues to whale despite the global moratorium, mainly targeting fin whales.

“Fin whales are gentle giants of our Ocean and they deserve to be treated with respect and kindness,” Mark Simmonds OBE, director of science at Swiss NGO OceanCare, said in a written statement. “There are so many threats to these animals, it would be so easy to remove one of them and stop whaling once and for all. We will be redoubling our efforts to persuade Iceland and the two other countries that continue this terrible practice — Norway and Japan — to change their minds.”

Banner image caption: Whale cutting in Hvalfjörður in the west of Iceland. Image by Dagur Brynjólfsson via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a senior staff writer for Mongabay’s Ocean Desk. Follow her on Twitter @ECAlberts.

International outcry as Iceland lifts ban on what could be last whale hunt

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Animal WelfareAnimalsCetaceansCharismatic AnimalsHuntingMarine AnimalsMarine BiodiversityMarine MammalsOceansWhalesWhalingIceland

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