On Whaling

Minister of Fisheries Einar K. Guðfinnson's announcement earlier this week that Iceland would again begin commercial whaling didn't really surprise any of us completely. Iceland has been whaling for scientific purposes for a number of years now, and most of us knew that it was only a matter of time before the research pretense would be dropped. What did surprise me, however, was how unprepared the ministry seems to have been for making this announcement, and how little economic sense starting such a project makes.

As a journalist for Agence France-Presse, I was assigned to speak with Ásta Einarsdóttir, lawyer for the Ministry of Fisheries. She was very eloquent in her defense of the minister's decision, and made some fair points. Among them, that due to an intense marketing campaign over the past two years, the number of Icelanders who said they would eat whale meat has risen. Also, of the 25,800 fin whales and 43,600 minke whales in Icelandic waters (according to International Whaling Commission [IWC] figures), Iceland only plans on a cull of 9 fin whales and 30 minke whales between now and 1 September 2007 - a very small percentage indeed.

However, even if you put aside the animal cruelty aspect of whaling (it can take an hour or longer for a whale to die once harpooned - at the same time, we have animal cruelty standards when it comes to our domestic livestock, our pets, and animals we hunt), commercial whaling is still folly, from an economic point of view.

Start with the market for whale meat within Iceland. While the number of people who said they would eat whale has risen, this still doesn't account for more than a very small percentage of the country. Naturally, we would need to export the meat. But even Einarsdóttir wasn't able to give me a clear answer on what countries they would export this meat to, apart from the Faeroe Islands (where the market for whale might very well be smaller than it is in Iceland!).

Given the global perception of whaling as a practice, it's doubtful we'll be able to find any new markets. If there were any, we would have found them already. This is because according to IWC regulations, all the whale meat culled from scientific whaling must be sold. Iceland has been free to sell this meat within its own country, or to export it to others, for years now. The result so far? Whale meat from as far back as 2003 is still sitting in freezers. Again, the domestic market is small, and the export market is virtually non-existent. (UPDATE: Japan, our largest potential market base for our whale meat, has already told us they have more than enough of their own and won't be buying any of ours.)

When I asked Einarsdóttir if the ministry had any opinion polls conducted as to whether or not people would be less likely to come to Iceland if we started commercial whaling again, she told me they had not. However, she countered, tourism has continued to increase over the years despite scientific whaling, and "we have no reason to believe that would be any different for commercial whaling."

Big mistake. Take it from someone who grew up outside of Iceland - to us, there is a world of difference between "scientific whaling" and "commercial whaling". We hear the words "scientific whaling" and think of controlled, careful, purposeful and environmentally beneficial studies being conducted on a few animals. On the other hand, when we hear the words "commercial whaling", this conjures images of Moby Dick, creatures getting harpooned and butchered, and blood in the ocean. Yes, the number of whales Iceland plans on hunting over the next year is a very tiny percentage of the total whale stocks, but that doesn't matter - perception does.

If the Ministry of Fisheries had conducted some preparatory PR campaign, wherein they treated global environmentalist groups as equals instead of the enemy, and had tried to sell the idea of Iceland's very limited whale hunting, things might've been a lot different. Perhaps knowing that commercial whaling is an unacceptable idea to the vast majority of the world, the ministry never bothered. Instead, whale watching groups are complaining about mass cancellations, government offices are being flooded with angry e-mails, and of the hundreds of news articles from around the world covering Iceland's commercial whaling, not a single one is positive. Commercial whaling is already hurting Iceland's image.

The bottom line is, will the benefits of commercial whaling outweigh the damages? It's not likely. When you combine the extremely limited market for whale meat with growing global outrage, you end up with more and more meat piling up in freezers. Worst of all, whaling is a subsidized industry. Scientific whaling has cost taxpayers over 200 million ISK in the past six years - despite the intense marketing campaigns and the export of meat to the Faeroe Islands. This is not likely to change.

Why on earth would we create an industry that demands millions of krónur from our taxes every year - an industry that's already starting to hurt sustainable industries like tourism? Why would we choose to steam ahead with such an industry without seriously gauging what global perception would be? Why would we try to sell products to a market that doesn't yet exist and shows no signs of ever existing? And why try to wedge an unprofitable industry that relies on tax subsidies to stay afloat - one that harms other industries and has no real market for its products - into a country that has a labour shortage?

Commercial whaling makes no sense for Iceland. What this prideful defiance will end up costing the country as a whole remains to be seen. Without even the most vague idea of what and how we will benefit from it - but some very clear and already present effects of how it harms us - commercial whaling shouldn't have been started in the first place.

- Paul F. Nikolov, Left Green candidate for parliamenthttp://paulfnikolov.blogspot.com