Iceland's government will submit a bill in February to ban commercial whaling, leaving only Norway and Japan as commercial whalers.
Iceland's government will submit a bill in February to ban commercial whaling. This move would leave Norway and Japan as the only two countries in the world to continue commercial whaling.
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In recent years, only Iceland, Norway, and Japan have conducted commercial whaling. Japan withdrew from the International Whaling Commission in 2019 and resumed commercial whaling in its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone. Norway resumed commercial whaling in 1993 and Iceland in 2006, despite an international moratorium that took effect in 1986. The bill will include a permanent ban on whaling. The interim government issued a five-year license to its sole remaining whaling company this year. During the current hunting season, which runs from June to September, 80 fin whales had been caught as of Wednesday. The quota for this year allows for 150 fin whales to be killed. Fin whales are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The moratorium allows Indigenous peoples in certain parts of the world, such as Greenland and Alaska, to hunt whales because whale products play a vital role in their nutritional and cultural lives.