Along with Norway and Japan, Iceland is one of the last three countries in the world to still practice whaling.
But the island state intends to eliminate its quotas from 2024 in the face of low demand, the Minister of Fisheries announced on Friday.
“Unless otherwise stated, there is little reason to allow whaling from 2024,” when current quotas expire, said Svandis Svavarsdottir, a member of the ruling left-wing Green Party.
"There is little evidence that there is an economic advantage to practicing this activity", she underlines in a column published by the daily Morgunbladid.
Reassessed in 2019, Icelandic quotas allow 209 catches each year for the fin whale, the second largest marine mammal after the blue whale, and 217 for the minke whale (also called minke whale), one of the smallest cetaceans, until 'at the end of 2023. But for three years, the two main license-holding companies have been shut down, and one of them announced in the spring of 2020 that it would definitely put its harpoons away.
Tough competition with Japan
Only one animal has been harpooned in the last three summer seasons, a minke whale in 2021. At issue: the difficult competition with Japan - the main market for whale meat - where commercial whaling has resumed since 2019 after the withdrawal of Tokyo of the International Whaling Commission.
In 2018, the last whaling summer in Icelandic waters, 146 fin whales and six minke whales were speared.
Commercial whaling was banned in 1986 by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) but Iceland, which had opposed this moratorium, resumed it in 2003. Only blue whale hunting, banned by the commission, is also in Iceland.