At last, after years and years of campaigning, it appears to me that the public are against whaling. The report by the National Geographic website clearly indicates to me that whaling is gradually fading away which is amazing news for animal advocates. I can hardly believe it. There are some clear signs from the whaling countries: Iceland, Norway, Finland and Japan.
Iceland
I will try and summarise the National Geographic article. One reason why whaling in Iceland has declined dramatically and may well stop entirely is because people prefer to watch the whales in the ocean rather than know that they’re being killed for their meat. As I said, it’s an attitude shift in the general public. In Iceland whale meat was never that popular anyway but tourism in the country pluged the hole as it was offered up as an Icelandic delicacy. But thanks to campaigns by IFAW and Icewhale even the tourists have gone off the idea of eating whale meat in Iceland.
So, in Iceland, looking at Wales is booming and eating them is dying. It looks like the major Icelandic operators are parking up their boats and giving up. They don’t seem to be too bothered. It almost seems as if they’ve accepted the inevitable. The managing director of the minky whaling company IP-Utgerd said, “I’m never going to hunt whales again, I’m stopping for good”.
Japan
In 2019 Japan stop whaling in the Antarctic after 80 years of slaughtering the animals there. They’ve left the International Whaling Commission are now hunt whales in their waters. Their whale hunters are subsidised by the Japanese government because the consumption of whale meat in Japan has been falling for years and there’s 4,000 tons of it stored in a growing stockpile. The subsidy to whalers makes it difficult if not impossible for Iceland to compete in any event which is an added issue to the ones mentioned above.
Norway
Norway is experiencing a similar downshift in whaling. The number of whaling vessels has dropped by almost 50% from 2016 to 2017. The whalers, nowadays, sell barely a third of the country’s quota.
Comment
Norway is killing whales at a much lower rate than they’re allowed to because the market isn’t there any longer. The market is dying out and this must be because of years of campaigning which has enlightened the citizens of the world to the objectionable nature of this business. in general whales are endangered with huge population falls. They’ve been overfished and it’s time to stop and leave them alone. Whale meat isn’t particularly nice in any event so whaling is just a cultural habit which can and should stop.
