Yahoo News 21 Jun 09;
REYKJAVIK (AFP) – Just days ahead of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting, Icelandic whalers landed two fin whales weighing 35 tonnes each, the first major catches of the season.
But instead of savaging the whaling company responsible, Hvalur, or its boss Kristjan Loftsson, campaigners Greenpeace turned on the Iceland government.
"The government has dismally failed to show leadership despite its own outspoken opposition to the hunt," said Sara Holden, Greenpeace's international whales campaign coordinator.
"Its reputation and that of Iceland as a whole was sliced and diced by a single company special interest lobby," she added.
Greenpeace was angry because in their view, the recently elected government, which only came to power on April 25, was not reversing the previous government's position on whaling.
Far from rejoining the whaling moratorium that Iceland broke in 2006 after 16 years, the left-wing coalition has decided to stick by the increase in the whale catches quota decided at the beginning of 2009.
That increase permitted Iceland's whalers to catch 150 Common Minke whales a year -- up from a total of nine, previously.
"Today, it is clear that the whaling policy in Iceland is really run by the whaler Kristjan Loftsson and his company Hvalur," said Holden.
But for Loftsson, whose company dates back to 1948, whales are simply a natural resource that are there to be exploited.
"There are nearly 20,000 Minke whales in the seas of Iceland," he said. "If we hunt 150 a year that is not going to make much difference."
Greenpeace, he dismissed as an industry of lies.
For Loftsson whaling is so important to Iceland that it would be better to stay outside the European Union if membership involved submitting to a hunting ban.
A fisheries and agriculture memo from March confirmed the visceral importance of the industry to the country, describing it as "a traditional part of part of Iceland's history".
Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir has been trying to allay fears in this area, with the fisheries and agriculture ministry presenting a bill to parliament on the issue.
The proposed law would be based on the principle that "if whaling is pursued, it will be done in a responsible and sustainable way", said a ministry statement.
"The minister will decide which species of whales will be caught, and how many of each species.
"This will give the minister an opportunity to consider grounded arguments on conflict of interests with other sectors, such as whale watching," it added.
This last practice, when tourists are taken out on boats to see the whales, is being promoted by anti-whaling campaigners as at least as profitable as actually hunting the whales.
"Whale watching is the sector within the tourism industry which has had the fastest growth in recent years, with growing numbers of jobs and income for the Icelandic economy," said the Icelandic Travel Industry Association.
The association called on the government to disavow on the whaling quotas set at the beginning of the year.
