With Japan Now Banned from Antarctic Whaling, This Country May Be Next

Right on the heels of the International Court of Justice ruling, barring Japan from continuing its “scientific” whale hunts in Antarctic waters, President Obama has taken another step forward in the fight against unethical whaling by imposing diplomatic sanctions on Iceland.

Iceland, along with Japan, has been carrying out whale hunts for years despite the 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling issued by the International Whaling Commission.

The country primarily targets fin whales for their meat even though these whales are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. What’s more, whale meat popularity has plummeted in Iceland and so most of Iceland’s catch goes straight to Japan – a country that is also losing its appetite for whale meat, further minimizing the need for these hunts.

Despite these facts, Iceland still continues on with their unsustainable whaling activities and has even increased their catch quotas. In December 2013, Iceland announced that it would allow 229 minke whales and 154 endangered fin whales to be hunted annually for the next five years. Seriously, WTF.

Thankfully, President Obama is on to them, noting that “Iceland’s actions jeopardize the survival of the fin whale and ‘diminish the effectiveness’ of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which is an ‘international agreement between governments’ that aims to ‘ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival,’” according to the CITES website.

“Just as the United States made the transition from a commercial whaling nation to a whale watching nation, we must enhance our engagement to facilitate this change by Iceland,” President Obama said.

In an effort to “facilitate this change,” President Obama has now directed federal agencies to undertake a number of diplomatic efforts that will encourage Iceland to stop its commercial whale hunt.

As the National Resource Defense Fund concisely put it, the President is pushing for “raising official objections, encouraging Iceland to increase its nonlethal use of whales (i.e., whale watching), and monitoring the activities of Icelandic companies that engaged in commercial whaling and trade in whale parts.”

This announcement marks the President’s second step this year in taking action against Iceland’s whale hunts. Back in February 2014, the Department of Interior announced it has certified that Iceland’s commercial whaling undermines the international wildlife Conservation treaty of CITES.

Yet even with these positive steps, economic sanctions are truly what’s needed to get the ball rolling further, as nonprofits Whale and Dolphin Conservation and National Resource Defense Fund have stated. Moreover, the rest of the world needs to get on board too, since collective action will certainly increase pressure on Iceland to act faster.

What You Can Do

Wherever you are in the world, be sure to write to your elected officials and urge them to stand with the ocean’s whales and fight against Iceland’s whaling activities. If you are in the U.S., please contact the White House today via email, phone, and/or postal mail and ask that President Obama take stronger actions against Iceland and hold them accountable for their CITES’ violation.

Find President Obama’s full statement on Icelandic whaling online right here.

Image source: mrgreen09 / Flickr