Icelandic fishermen will resume their hunt for the endangered fin whale this year after a two-year pause and have set a target of 191 kills for the season. An apparent loosening of Japanese regulations on Icelandic exports had made the resumption of the hunting commercially viable again, the country’s only fin whaling company, Hvalur, announced. […]
Tag: Fin Whale
How Sea Shepherd lost battle against Japan’s whale hunters in Antarctic
A fleet of Japanese ships is currently hunting minke whales in the Southern Ocean. It is a politically incendiary practice: the waters around Antarctica were long ago declared a whale sanctuary, but the designation has not halted Japan’s whalers, who are continuing a tradition of catching whales “for scientific research” in the region. In the […]
POLL: Should Japan be sanctioned for continuing to slaughter whales?
The past two years have been tough going for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. A big part of its mission since 2005 has been to intercept and stop Japanese ships from hunting whales. Every such outing costs Sea Shepherd about $4 million. In the years when they found success and actually foiled Japan’s whalers, that […]
Issy Wheatear and more
Yesterday was my birthday but I couldn’t go birding. So today I cashed in on my birthday credit, and went out with James (AKA The Driver), Dave, Phil and Will to Burnham Overy Dunes. Weather was looking good and we hoped to find Norfolk’s first Sibe Accentor. But when we got there we started complaining […]
POLL: Should Norway’s whaling program be stopped?
So few people in Norway want to eat whale meat that it’s ending up in the feed manufactured for animals on fur farms, according to a new document released by the Environmental Investigation Agency, a London-based nonprofit, and the U.S.-based Animal Welfare Institute. The document shows that more than 113 metric tons of minke whale […]
POLL: Should Japan stop whaling?
Hunting whales is irrelevant to feeding Japan’s population, draws global condemnation and is certainly not economic. So why does Japan still do it? The answer from the Japanese government is that whaling is an ancient part of Japanese culture, that fishermen have caught whales for centuries, and that Japan will never allow foreigners to tell […]
Icelanders Don’t Like Whale Meat – So Why the Hunts?
When it comes to commercial whaling, Japan is in the limelight. The country has been widely accused of using a scientific research program as a guise for hunting hundreds of whales a year and selling their meat. Last year, an international court agreed that the program isn’t scientific and ordered Japan to shut it down—to […]
Video: Mysterious New Humpback Whale “Song” Detected?
The latest release in the humpback whale’s haunting sound collection is a track so unusual that scientists hardly know what to make of it. Unlike anything on the hit album Songs of the Humpback Whale (released in 1970, the wildlife recording went multi-platinum), the mysterious new noise has such a low beat it’s scarcely audible. […]
Experts puzzled as 30 whales stranded in ‘unusual mortality event’ in Alaska
Thirty large whales have recently washed ashore on Alaskan coasts, prompting a federal agency to declare an “unusual mortality event” and mount an official investigation into the mystery of what could be killing so many marine mammals. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) are “very concerned” about how many whales are stranding […]
Iceland brewery makes beer using smoked whale testicles
Icelandic brewery Stedji, which is producing the beer in time for the country’s mid-winter festival, Thorri, said the Hvalur 2 beer was made with the testicles of fin whales – which are classified as endangered on the conservation Red List – smoked in a “traditional way” with dried sheep dung. The move, which comes a […]
