This week we’re attending the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission to keep a watchful eye on any negotiations that might lead to legitimizing commercial whaling. We’ve been quite busy working around the clock for the whales and to prove to everyone that whales are meant to be seen, not hurt. Sadly, as the clock ticks on the conference room wall Iceland continues to kill endangered fin whales. Just this morning the whalers killed two more of these rare giants. The same whales my friends in Iceland’s whale watching industry depends on.

On Tuesday we released Whale Watching Worldwide and Australian minister Peter Garrett introduced the IFAW report to the IWC Commission meeting with an excellent speech, crediting IFAW for its production on the floor of the meeting. There was a great deal of support among the countries in attendance for the report.

Japan’s ‘scientific whaling’ in the North Pacific was discussed and as usual the pro-whaling countries praised the critical importance of lethal research. I’m sure if Japan’s supermarkets were in attendance they’d praise the program for affording government subsidized meat to sell on its shelves. It was nice to hear the US representative strongly oppose scientific whaling - a product of IFAW’s diligent efforts to put pressure on the US government.

Stay tuned for the latest on our hard work to protect these great animals.

Governments from more than 80 countries opened the 61st annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Madeira today (Mon), following a year of closed-door discussions which have failed to secure agreement from Japan, Iceland and Norway to respect the body’s scientific procedures and commercial whaling ban.

Conservation-minded delegates to the week-long meeting said much is at stake for whales and decades of international efforts to protect them.

Patrick Ramage, whale programme director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said: "Our planet's great whales face more threats today than at any time in history. It's time to get rid of commercial whaling, not the whaling ban."

An IWC moratorium on commercial whaling came into effect in 1986. Since that time, the government of Japan has killed some 12,000 whales, abusing a provision in the convention which permits whaling for scientific research purposes.

A major focus of this week's meeting is a proposed deal to sanction unsustainable coastal whaling by Japan in exchange for a reduction in its ongoing "scientific" whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Such a deal would violate the moratorium and established scientific procedures, legitimise Japan’s ongoing "scientific" whaling and ignore decades of work by the IWC Scientific Committee.

"Countries that support sound science and whale conservation should reject this deal and instead take action inside and outside the IWC to make the commercial whaling moratorium effective," Ramage added. "The future of the IWC is conservation science, not commercial slaughter."

A new IFAW report to be released during the Madeira meeting documents the continuing dramatic growth and expanding economic contribution of whale watching worldwide.

I just arrived back from Hvalfjörður filming the whaling boat bringing two fin whales to the whaling station. I went with a cameraman and a photographer from Morgunblaðið and a journalist.

The helicopter came and met us near the mouth of the fjord at 3am. The helecopter we were supposed to get was not available but that was Ok. The whaling boat was already in the fjord so we quickly got the photographer on board. We spent more time having the cameraman on board.
 

The weather was quite rough with strong wind so we could not follow the boat in the helecopter all the way to the station. There was no time or chance to do a proper stand up either but we drove to the whaling station and I drove through the open gate after another car. 

Sigursteinn

Images and footage of the first endangered fin whales harpooned in Iceland this season are available now from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

As the first of Iceland’s whaling ships arrived back in port today with two dead fin whales lashed alongside it, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) again urges the Icelandic government to call off this cruel and needless slaughter now. Whalers aim to kill 150 of the endangered species, along with 200 minke whales, during the 2009 season.

IFAW opposes whaling because it is unacceptably cruel – there is no humane way to kill a whale and research has shown that whales shot with explosive harpoons can take more than half an hour to die.

Opinion polling and independent economic research in Iceland has revealed little or no appetite for whale meat, while responsible whale watching, by contrast, is financially lucrative and one of Iceland’s biggest tourist draws.

Robbie Marsland, UK Director of IFAW, said: “We are disappointed that Iceland has pressed ahead with its whaling quotas, despite widespread opposition. We believe it is in the country’s own interests now more than ever before not to embark on activities which could damage Iceland’s international reputation and its business interests.

“Whaling is cruel, unnecessary and unsustainable. There is little market for whale meat. The best thing for Icelanders as well as for whales would be for the Icelandic government to end whaling now and work instead to protect its valuable whale watching industry.”

Whale watching generates almost £5m a year for coastal communities in Iceland.

Please take action at stopwhaling.org

Fin whaling has just started again in Iceland after a pause since 2006. The first of the endangered fins to be killed this summer are expected to be brought to Hvalfjordur whaling station tomorrow (Friday June 19). As a human being I feel very sorry that this brutal killing is happening. As an Icelander I feel ashamed for my governement. A few days ago I did a whale watching tour with the Elding company just outside Reykjavík. For half an hour we watched a calm minke whale swimming peacefully near us. On board were guests from different countries, many from Finland, the UK and the US. As we were all enjoying the company of the minke whale the captain came to me and pointed north at a small dot in the distance. "There´s a minke whaling boat," he said angrily. A few moments later we all watched the minke disappear gracefully, swimming north in the direction of the whalers some four miles away. This is our grim reality in Iceland.

 Please help put an end to the bloody business of whaling by supporting whale watching!

Sigursteinn

"...Experience has taught us that pointing fingers and naming and shaming nations or politicians will not bring us forward. The best way to promote protection of animals is to establish a dialogue, increase understanding between the parties and offer assistance to locals to change,” says Robbie Marsland, CEO of IFAW, who recently visited Iceland and had meetings with fisheries minister, Jon Bjarnason and environment minister Svandis Svavarsdottir.

This was the 12th visit by Marsland to Iceland over a period of five years, but has put huge efforts into the campaign against whaling by Iceland since scientific whaling started in 2002. During this period, IFAW has, according to Marsland, commissioned studies of the domestic market for whale meat, which revealed that less than 1% of Icelanders had bought whale meat during the last six months. Then the organization had commissioned a report on the cost of scientific whaling, which turned out to be one billion ISK during 1989 – 2005 and has commissioned a study on the reputation of Icelandic companies working in the international market.

“We soon realized that to many Icelanders, whaling was part of the national identity because whaling is linked to fisheries. We saw that our claims that whaling is inhumane would not be useful in the campaign. Rather it would be more useful to talk in what whaling costs. We have pointed out that whale watching is more profitable than whaling, pointed out the tiny size of the market world wide which again means that number of jobs createtd by whaling are miniscule, but opportunity in job creation related to whale watching,” says Marsland.