FEATURE - Iceland whalers, conservationists angry over ban end
Date: 10-Dec-02
Country: DENMARK
Author: Sigga Hagalin
While tour operators and conservationists cry out that the decision will do enormous damage to Iceland as a tourist and whale-watching destination, whalers are angry they will have to wait at least four years before going hunting again.
Iceland announced in October that it would resume whaling, a day after the International Whaling Commission readmitted the country as a full member on condition it would not begin commercial whaling until after 2006.
The government has not decided whether it will begin whaling for scientific purposes before then.
The decision might have been expected to please Icelandic whalers, but Kristjan Loftsson, chief executive of the whaling company Hvalur in Reykjavik, is far from happy.
Hvalur has kept its ships and stations ready to resume whaling ever since it was banned in 1989.
According to Loftsson, Iceland could have begun whaling last year when it first applied for readmission to the global body which regulates the ban on whaling. Iceland stormed out of the whaling commission 10 years ago in anger over the moratorium.
"The commission has no authority to bar a whaling nation from joining it," Loftsson said.
He found it unacceptable that commercial whaling could not begin before 2006 and said the government had simply tried to win the commission's favour by backing down from its plans to ignore the whaling moratorium.
"I don't know what they're thinking," Loftsson said. "They (the government) seem to be in constant retreat. We could easily have begun whaling this year."
On the other side of the country, in the village of Husavik, much of the local tourist industry is centred around the whale-watching tour operator North Sailing. The government's decision has cast gloom over the enterprise.
"If they really go ahead with it and begin whaling, we might as well close down right away," said North Sailing's marketing director Heimir Hardarson.
"We know from experience in Norway that whaling and whale-watching can't exist together. The whales simply go away."
Whale-watching operators argue that their business is more profitable than whaling ever was. The Icelandic tourist industry has demanded that the government survey how whaling may affect Icelandic interests in tourism and export markets.
"We really don't think there are any arguments for resuming whaling in Iceland," Hardarson said. "It's only a fight about sovereignty, to show that Iceland can do whatever it wants, without asking for anyone's permission."
More than one third of tourists to Iceland went whale watching last summer.
Whale-watching operators estimate the direct value of their business in Iceland at $8 million a year, while whaling yielded only $3-4 million a year before the ban in 1989.
"WHALING IS INEVITABLE"
But Arni Mathiesen, Iceland's Fisheries Minister, dismissed the whale-watching company's comments as "pure nonsense propaganda".
"Whaling is inevitable," Mathiesen said. "The whales affect the fish stocks in our ecosystem, and there is no other way to do research on them apart from by hunting them for scientific purposes."
Mathiesen said whale stocks had increased and commercial whaling would ensure a more balanced exploitation of marine life.
He said Hvalur's complaints showed the kind of pressure the government was under.
"Of course we would have wanted to begin whaling right away, but we are trying to do this peacefully," Mathiesen said.
The controversy over whaling in Iceland culminated in 1986 when environmental activists sank two whaling boats in Reykjavik harbour.
Iceland was allowed to hunt 60 whales a year for scientific purposes from 1986 until 1989, when all whaling was banned.
The country succeeded in joining the International Whaling Commission this year when the Swedish delegation voted to reaccept their Nordic neighbour. The Swedes said later they had voted by mistake.
The mistake was a dramatic one, as the vote was extremely tight - of