1,278 Minke Whales To Be Slaughtered As Norway Announces Whale Hunt
Despite a global moratorium on commercial whaling, Norway has declared its controversial whaling season for 2021, and hopes an “upward trend” for whale meat will continue.
Scenes from a whale hunt. Credit: Sea Shepherd
Over 1,000 minke whales are to be slaughtered in Norway this year as the country gives the go ahead for another controversial whaling season.
Norway’s Minister of Fisheries and Seafood, Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen, announced the kill quota last week, and explained that he hopes the “upward trend in demand for whale meat will continue”.
Ingebrigsten's statement refers to the apparent rise in demand for whale meat in the country.
The increase in sales is partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as Norwegians shun imported meat, and look instead to local produce. And with international travel restrictions, more Norwegians are holidaying at home, including to the north of the country, where whale meat is much more prevalent.
And obtaining whale meat has been made easier than ever as the government recently loosened restrictions on whaling. Under newly introduced guidelines, the law now only requires one person on board a vessel to have whaling experience.
“And even then, they only need to have participated in a whale hunt once in the last six years”, explains Kate O’Connell, of the Animal Welfare Institute. “This poses a significant problem for the welfare of the whales targeted, as less experienced harpooners have been shown to have higher time to death rates”, adds O’Connell.
Even with experienced whalers, the time it takes for a harpooned whale to die (TTD) can be as long as 15 minutes. An internal report to Norway’s Directorate of Fisheries found that 18 percent of whales in the 2012 hunting season were not instantaneously killed, and that the median TTD was six minutes.
The Norwegian hunts are particularly damaging to conservation efforts, as around 70 percent of the whales killed are female, many of whom are pregnant. This is due to the fact that female minke swim further north along the Norwegian coast, during their migration in the North Atlantic Ocean.
“Pregnant females are slower and accordingly also easier to kill”, Fabienne McLellan, of OceanCare, tells Mongabay. “Also it is to be assumed that the females swim closer to the coast for energy and security reasons and are therefore caught more easily.”
After formally objecting to the global moratorium on commercial whaling, Norway has allowed commercial whaling to take place since 1993. During this time, over 14,000 minke whales have been killed, with the majority exported to Japan. And now not even the global pandemic can stop the whale hunt: Norway deemed seal and whale hunting “essential” operations during the country’s strict lockdown measures last year, permitting whalers to slaughter over 500 whales in 2020.
Norway isn’t alone in hunting whales. Particularly gruesome hunts include the Faroe Islands’ annual ‘Grindadrap’ - translated as ‘the murder of whales’ - where fisherman drive entire pods of whales and dolphins to the beaches, before the marine animals are beaten and killed with clubs, kinves and spears. Each year, the sea turns red with blood from the hundreds of butchered animals.
However, there are signs of change. Iceland has banned whale hunting for the last two years in a row, as the industry there continues to suffer from waning public support and declining profits.
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