Minke caught by the whaling ship from Isafjordur in NW Iceland. Whalers cut the whale on board and place it in containers before bringing their boat in to the harbour.
"Time has come for an answer from the Government on the offer,
and it should be a positive one.The Greenpeace proposal is good for
the Icelandic people, for tourism and for the environment," says
Fridrik Sigurdsson, Chairman of the Husavik Marketing Council.
Ten days ago Greenpeace offered the Icelandic Government a new
chance to save their globally damaged reputation (1). In return
Greenpeace urges the Government to stop whaling and not resume it
under any guise.
"I want to send a short message to the government: Stop whaling
and don´t start again. Whale watching is extremely important to us
but it is impossible to expand when we do such a wrong thing as
whale hunting. For us in Husavik it could be a disaster," says
Fridrik
Sigurdsson.(2)
In an interview with Kyodo news September 10, Icelandic Prime
Minister David Oddsson said that a decision by Iceland on whether
it will resume commercial whaling may be affected by whether Japan
will agree to buy whale meat from Iceland. "We could, in a very
small scale, hunt whales for national consumption but that would be
a very, very small scale. We are a small nation," he said.
"The Icelandic Government may just as well cancel all plans for
whaling, since there will never be any export to Japan.
International reactions and, ironically, toxic contamination of
whale meat would stop that, says Frode Pleym, spokesperson for
Greenpeace on the Rainbow Warrior in Seydisfjordur. (3.)
Supported by the arrival of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow
Warrior last week, Greenpeace launched a public tour that is
currently taking the ship around the country. The purpose of the
tour is to engage in dialogue with the people of Iceland to support
and interact with the existing local pressure on the Icelandic
Government. The Rainbow Warrior was greeted by three vessels at sea
when arriving in Husavik.
The Rainbow Warrior first sailed against Icelandic whaling on
her maider voyage in 1978; many the countries that were whaling
then are now strong opponents of commercial whaling. They accept
that the oceans are severely degraded and that whales face a
complex array of environmental threats including those posed by
toxic chemicals, climate change and even noise pollution. In such
circumstances it would be folly to restart whaling, especially when
there is a truly sustainable alternative - whale watching.
Notes: (1). Through the Greenpeace website and other communications to our supporters, we will ask people around the world to participate in protecting vulnerable areas and species through appropriate opportunities, including visiting Iceland. As of today the pledge to the Icelandic Government numbered 5304. Read the full offer on www.greenpeace.org.(2.) It is estimated that about a dozen whale watching companies have been started in Iceland in the last ten years, generating US$8.5 million in 2001. Commercial whaling generated US$ 3-4 million between 1986-1989 when commercial hunts where stopped. 5.6.2003 (AP) Nationalities of tourists with overnight stays in Iceland: 13 % Germany, 11 % US, 10 % UK, 7% Sweden and 5 % Denmark.(3.) Japanese consumer groups say studies by the National Veterinary Institute in Oslo and the Norwegian College of Veterinary Medicine have found the average concentration of PCBs in north-east Atlantic minke whales to be 3.8 parts per million (ppm). The provisional regulatory standard for PCBs in marine products in Japan is much lower, at 0.5 ppm