Commercial whaling was banned in under the IWC's moratorium. However Iceland and Norway lodged official objections to the moratorium and have continued a commercial hunt. Japan and Iceland have also continued to hunt whales under the guise of "scientific whaling". Iceland does too. Along with Norway, the country openly defies a moratorium set by the International Whaling Commission IWC , a voluntary body whose member nations agreed not to hunt medium and large whales for profit.
So does the endangered fin whale, also called the finback whale. But Icelandic whalers hunt them both anyway. This caught the attention of Jonny Zwick, a filmmaker based in California. How is it that Iceland can even hunt the animals? When the country wanted to rejoin the whaling commission in after a decade long hiatus, it included a clause in its reentry bid objecting to the commercial whaling ban.
Minke meat largely appeals to tourists who can order it at Icelandic restaurants. The business has even incorporated whale into beer and luxury dog food, and in it was forced to take a long and circuitous route to avoid European ports that blocked passage of its ships.
Intrigued by the film, I recently caught up with Zwick to discuss it. My uncle is a marine biologist conservationist. He actually informed me about what was taking place in Iceland. I decided to go and was pretty shocked by the access that I was granted—and decided that somebody needs to tell this story.
When I found out that 52 percent of Icelanders still supported whaling in , I really wanted to hear why. Iceland is the only country in the world to hunt the endangered finback whale, which is very different from the commercial minke whaling that takes place in Norway and Japan. By the middle of the century, many of these species could not recover quickly enough to repopulate their losses.
The reason for the large economic boom in the whaling industry during the 17th century was caused by significant technological advances in ships, harpoons, and other whaling equipment. In fact, although whales were hunted since the B. Due to this hunting period, many of the whale species have become endangered, causing some countries to become concerned about the condition of whales regarding whether or not some species face the possibility of extinction and the continued efforts of the whaling industry in certain countries that are having an impact on whale populations.
With the creation of alternative resources and the need to protect the whale species, new laws were put into place to monitor and minimize the unnecessary killing of whales, and in international agreements were made to begin trying to regulate the whaling industry in the hopes of preserving the endangered whale species.
Odontocetes use their teeth to catch their prey, whereas mysticetes use their baleen plates to filter vast quantities of water, straining out their much smaller prey, such as krill.
Despite the smaller size of their prey, most mysticetes are much larger than odontocetes and are referred to as the "great whales. The hunting and killing of cetaceans by humans is termed "whaling" and is practiced on both odontocetes and mysticetes by several countries. Although whaling historically was for oil rendered from whale fat or blubber and spermaceti from the head cavity of sperm whales used to make candles and cosmetics and as a fine lubricant , cetaceans are mainly hunted and killed today for food in both commercial for profit whaling operations and by indigenous peoples hunting for nutritional and cultural subsistence known as Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling ASW.
Cetaceans are also killed in a misguided effort to reduce competition for fish and several small cetaceans small whale, dolphin, and porpoise species are hunted for use as bait to catch fish. Odontocetes are hunted in some communities for their teeth, which are used as currency. Some small cetaceans primarily bottlenose dolphins and belugas today but previously orcas, as well are also captured live for sale to aquariums.
Generally, whaling can be split into two types—whaling on the great whales and the hunting of small cetaceans in coastal waters, such as the infamous drive hunts in Japan and the Faroe Islands. While the ICRW includes definitions of some odontocetes and includes references to toothed whales in its schedule the binding rules and definitions that implement the ICRW , the IWC has concentrated its management on the great whales, setting quotas and other restrictions on hunting.
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