They Denounce Hunting The World’s Biggest Whale
Ecological groups denounce the hunting of the world’s largest whale, the blue whale. This species appeared dismembered on an Icelandic ship, despite being protected.
Whale hunting was virtually eradicated by the first environmental movements in the late 20th century, which sought to protect whales.
However, some countries continue to preserve this practice and even try to make it fashionable again.
Why is blue whale hunting prohibited?
The authors of this atrocity are Iceland’s only whaling company, known as Kristjan Loftsson. The blue whale is an endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and hunting this species is illegal.
The Icelandic company can only capture one species of whale known as the Fin Whale, one of the Mediterranean cetaceans, so hunting the blue whale is a real attack on marine fauna.
The blue whale was abundant in all the world’s oceans until the 20th century, when its hunting brought it almost to extinction. Currently, it is estimated that there are between 5,000 and 12,000 copies in the world.
Therefore, whaling has been responsible for this reduction: in the past, it is estimated that there were about 300,000 specimens in Antarctica, while today there are about 2,000 individuals.
Hunting the biggest whales in the world is illegal
The Icelandic company defended itself by insinuating that the species it captured is not a pure blue whale, but a hybrid between a common whale and a blue whale.
Whale hybrids are very rare. According to experts, only five specimens have been registered in the last 40 years in northern European waters.
In addition, the images released show what for experts is a juvenile male blue whale, so it would be the first time that a whale of this species is slaughtered in the world in almost half a century.
Whale hunting is still legal in many countries
The ban on hunting whales came in 1986, although several countries have managed to maintain their activities as whalers and dolphin hunters for many years.
It is amazing to know that the Basque whalers were some of the most prolific of the Middle Ages.
An example of this is Japan, a country that claimed to hunt its whales for scientific purposes. However, the Japanese are the biggest consumers of cetacean meat and it soon became clear that their hunting was for commercial purposes.
Unfortunately, they managed to continue hunting whales and other marine mammals such as dolphins. In 2017, more than 333 whales were killed in this country, many of which were pregnant.
In the case of some Nordic countries, Iceland and Norway continued to practice whaling, taking advantage of legal loopholes.
In the case of Iceland, it was only allowed to hunt a few species of whales, so hunting blue whales violates its own legislation.
Nordic countries continue to hunt whales for the Asian market, so one of the goals of conservation organizations is to educate these populations so that they don’t consume cetaceans.
DNA will decide what happens to blue whale hunts in Iceland
Given the rarity of hybrids and the cut of the animal, the identification of this blue whale will be made by DNA, which will decide if it can be sold in Asia.
On the other hand, if it is a blue whale, not only can it not be sold, but sanctions will be imposed on those whalers.
This could ban them from the whaling market, which would leave the country with no company dedicated to hunting these animals.
