Carrying out a threat it made last year, Iceland has left the International
Whaling Commission. But the country’s fisheries minister, Thorsteinn Palsson,
insists that Iceland will not resume whaling immediately.
An IWC moratorium on commercial whaling has been in effect since 1986.
At last year’s IWC annual meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland threatened to leave
after IWC scientists dismissed the country’s request to take 92 fin and
158 minke whales (This Week, 8 June 1991). Iceland’s demand was based upon
its ‘safe management procedure’. The IWC is trying to develop its own procedures
for whaling, and the scientists said Iceland’s request was premature.
Palsson says the IWC was set up both to conserve and exploit whales,
but that in recent years it has switched solely to conserving them. This
change gives Iceland the right to leave, he says.
Ray Gamble, head of the IWC secretariat in Britain, says there is now
a ‘distinct possibililty’ that the pro-whaling nations, Norway, Iceland,
Canada, Greenland, Denmark and the Faeroe islands, with Japan as an observer,
will use the North Atlantic Committee for Cooporation and Research on Marine
Mammals to manage whaling in opposition to the IWC.
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Norway’s IWC delegate, Jan Arvesen, says Norway will wait and see what
happens at the next IWC meeting in Glasgow in June before deciding whether
to stay in the IWC.
Even if Norway joins Iceland in leaving the IWC, neither are likely
to start whaling soon. The US has already boycotted fish exports from Japan
and the former Soviet Union for catching whales without IWC permission.
The European Community would also oppose whaling. Iceland and Norway have
applied to join the Community.
