Iceland announces plans to end whaling from 2024 as demand dwindles
- Demand for Icelandic whale meat has decreased dramatically since Japan – Iceland’s main market, especially for fin whale meat – returned to commercial whaling in 2019
- ‘There are few justifications to authorise the whale hunt beyond 2024,’ said Iceland’s Fisheries Minister Svandis Svavarsdottir
Iceland, one of the only countries that still hunts whales commercially, said on Friday it plans to end the practice from 2024 as demand for whale meat dwindles.
For the past three years, Iceland’s whalers have barely taken their boats out into the North Atlantic despite the country’s large quotas.
Demand for Icelandic whale meat has decreased dramatically since Japan – Iceland’s main market, especially for fin whale meat – returned to commercial whaling in 2019 after a three-decade hiatus.
The extension of a no-fishing coastal zone, requiring whalers to go even further offshore, also made Iceland’s hunt more costly.
“There are few justifications to authorise the whale hunt beyond 2024”, Fisheries Minister Svandis Svavarsdottir, a member of the Left Green party, wrote in Morgunbladid newspaper.
“There is little proof that there is any economic advantage to this activity,” she said.
Iceland, Norway and Japan are the only countries that authorise the commercial whale hunt, despite criticism from animal rights activists and environmentalists, concerns about toxins in the meat and a shrinking market.
Iceland’s annual quotas for 2019 to 2023 allow for the hunting of 209 fin whales – the planet’s second-largest species after the blue whale and considered endangered – and 217 minke whales, one of the smallest species.