Marking an incredible win for animal welfare, Iceland has suspended its fin whaling season this summer! This decision comes after
an Icelandic study revealed that nearly half of all hunted whales "suffered slow and painful deaths" during the country's hunting season last year.
While this is a huge victory, we're not at the finish line yet.
The country has yet to entirely ban commercial whaling, and until they do, we must keep the pressure on! Sign the petition and demand that Icelandic Fisheries Minister Svandís Svavarsdóttir end fin whaling for good!The study that led to this decision revealed heartbreaking truths about hunting whales.
Explosive harpoons are shot into these intelligent, gentle mammal' bodies. Then, whales struggle anywhere from 10 minutes up to two hours in violent pain, slowly drowning and bleeding out until they finally die. It's clear why Iceland's Animal Welfare Board found this to be a violation of the country's animal welfare laws, and we're so thankful it led to this whaling season's suspension.
Iceland is one of only three countries that hunts whales commercially (in other words, for profit), along with Japan and Norway. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has understood for decades that whaling is not only torturously inhumane -- it could lead to the extinction of many precious whale species! In fact, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial whaling in the 1980s for this very reason. But Iceland, Japan, and Norway claimed they had a right to chase down and slaughter these amazing creatures, so they have ignored the ban.
It's high time that Iceland caught up with the rest of the world, and admitted that whaling causes unnecessary whale suffering and threatens the biodiversity of our oceans. At the end of the 2023 whaling quota, aka the number of whales that Icelandic hunters can slaughter, a
new kill count will need to be approved by the Fisheries Minister for 2024. Let's demand that number be zero.
It's a huge first step that Minister Svavarsdóttir suspended whaling this season based on animal welfare violations, but this momentum can't stop there. Sign to support the end of whale hunting in Iceland!