By Pete Thomas
Iceland’s controversial whaling program fell under harsh attack this week when it was revealed that whalers had likely killed an endangered blue whale.
Environmental groups have shared photos of the dead whale at a processing facility. Some experts are unsure whether the mammal is a blue whale or a blue whale-fin whale mix.
Blue whales and fin whales are endangered species, and hunting them commercially is a flaunt of international law.
Icelandic whalers have spent the past several weeks hunting fin whales, under national permits, for the first time in three years. The whalers are not authorized to kill blue whales.
The meat of fin whales is sold to Japan, which also has a controversial whaling program.
Sea Shepherd, which has been monitoring activity at Iceland’s whaling station in Hvalfjordur, reported Wednesday that the blue whale was killed July 7. (Sea Shepherd did not mention the possibility of a hybrid whale.)
Sea Shepherd claims that the blue whale kill is in addition to the slaughter by Icelandic whalers of 21 fin whales by the company Hvalur hf.
“No other nation – not even Japan or Norway – slaughters fin whales, and there has not been a blue whale harpooned by anyone for the last 50 years until this one was harpooned by the [vessel] Hvalur 8,” Sea Shepherd stated.
The group Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) reported the blue whale kill under a headline, “Icelandic Whalers Breach International Law and Kill Iconic, Protected Blue Whale By Mistake.”
The WDC report stated that the whale was first spotted as it was positioned on a ramp by Arne Feuerhahn, a German conservationist, who noted that the massive mammal “was strikingly different in appearance to a fin whale.”
Marianne Rasmussen, a scientist with Project Blue Whale, told the WDC: “Based on the physical appearance and coloration of the lower jaw and baleen plates, it cannot be a fin whale. The mottled-grey coloration of the body points toward a blue whale, so the whale in question is either a blue whale or a blue/fin hybrid, genetics can confirm this.”
The nonprofit Hard to Port, headed By Feuerhahn, has been following the whaling effort on its Facebook page, and has shared links to a handful of reports by Iceland-based news sites.
Blue whales are the largest creatures on the planet; they can measure 100 feet and weigh nearly 200 tons. Fin whales are the second largest whale species. Both species were hunted to the brink of extinction during the whaling era.
The International Whaling Commission adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982, but a handful of countries oppose the ban and still conduct limited whaling operations.
–Whale images courtesy of Hard to Port
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