Iceland Whale Hunt Goes on Despite Protests
Date: 20-Aug-03
Country: ICELAND
Author: Gleb Bryanski
Two vessels with whale hunting permits were still out at sea after a third, the Njordur, returned with the first minke whale caught in Icelandic waters since 1989, said Johan Sigurjonsson, a director at the Icelandic Marine Research Institute.
The 16-yard-long vessel, off-limits to journalists, was due to resume the hunt later on Tuesday after bringing its catch ashore at the west coast village of Olafsvik.
A Reuters witness said the deck looked empty apart from half a dozen big knives and machinery covered with bloodstains, used to cut up the whale.
The first catch was a 5.6-yard-long male, Sigurjonsson said, calling it "rather small." Adult minke whales grow to 10 yards.
Iceland plans initially to catch 38 minke whales as part of what it says is scientific research on the impact of a growing whale population on fish stocks vital for the livelihood of Icelandic fishermen.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States was "extremely disappointed" and could consider sanctions against imports from the north Atlantic island.
Jill Sanders of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in Reykjavik to monitor the whale hunt, said the exercise was pointless from a scientific point of view.
"There's absolutely no need to go out and kill whales in the ocean," she told Reuters.
About 10 dead minke whales were washed ashore in Iceland every year, she said. "They (scientists) can cut their stomachs if they want to find out what they have been eating."
The British-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) said Iceland's "so-called scientific hunt" was the first step toward the culling of whales in the name of fisheries management and a front for resuming commercial activities.
Commercial whaling has been banned since 1986 because 13 of the world's great whale species are considered endangered.
A vast majority of Iceland's 290,000 people support whaling, opinion polls show, and Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson called the hunt legitimate.
"The whale population...is a consumer of vast quantities of fish stocks. But we don't really know what is the extent of that because we have not been able to do the sufficient research," he told a news conference in Anchorage, Alaska.