Svein Ove Haugland, deputy director of the Norwegian Fishermen's Sales Organisation: "This season is more or less finished and it's been very good."
The eventual figure may increase slightly before the season's end but is already the highest since 1993, when Norway resumed whaling
"Yah, just a little tickle - zey don't really feel a thing!" |
In 2013, Norway caught 590 rorqual whales, far higher than the previous year. The yield for 2014 remains far below the country's annual quota of 1,286 whales, and the govt claims the 4mth.hunt is for the "protection and sustainable harvesting of marine resources."
However, the whalers have a problem: a bottleneck in the market. Very few locals want to eat minke meat! Åge Eriksen, director of fishing firm Hopen Fisk: "We possess more meat than we can sell and that is not a favourable position." No shit, Sherlock!
Some is exported to Japan, which was ordered to end its own so-called "scientific" hunts in the Antarctic by the UN earlier this year. But the Japanese stockpile of frozen unwanted whale meat is now monstrous too.
Norway's fishing ministry claims there are 71,000 minke whales in the central Atlantic off Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Around two dozen vessels participated in its whaling season this year.
Greenpeace believes whaling in Norway is bound to die out due to lack of demand.
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