Fin In The Firing Line

26 countries recently filed a diplomatic protest over Iceland's whaling.
Iceland defends it's position, claiming it's whalers kill no endangered whales. But since June, Icelandic whalers have killed more than 200 whales - including 125 fin and 70+ minke - despite a limited domestic market for minke meat and none at all for fin meat! Fin whales are listed as 'Endangered' by the authoritative 'Red List of Threatened Species', which estimates the global fin whale population has declined by more than 70% over the last three generations.
This season's hunt (the largest since the 1980s) hit another bloody milestone: the Hvalur whaling company, the only company licensed to hunt fin whales in Iceland, "celebrated" the killing of the 15,000th fin whale since the company started in 1947.
Now, it may seem odd that Iceland is hunting a species for which no local market exists: surely the fin whale meat just languishes in a freezer for years. Ah-ha, but here's the rub: Iceland is now exporting 1500 tonnes of whale meat to Japan! So staunch environmental activists like Sea Shepherd may do their very best to disrupt the Japanese Southern Oceans whale hunt, but... well...let's just say the Japs have "many ways to skin a cat". Damn it!