Oh there's only like 200 whales left, might as well finish them off - icelandic gov.

Can any Icelanders explain the point of this to me?

Fuck these guys.

I would highly recommend the recent Freakonomics Radio series about whaling. It's Episodes 549-551 and the bonus episode from 2023-08-06. If you're firmly against killing any living creature (or at least sentient creatures), I highly doubt it will change your mind (and I don't think that it should or that it tries to), but I also think it is really fascinating learning about the history of the whaling industry and hearing the perspective of a modern whaler in the bonus episode. Putting aside the obvious ethical issues with killing sentient creatures, it's interesting to consider things like whether there's a sustainable level of whaling, what a sustainable quota would look like, and how much we're in competition with certain whale species for harvesting fish as food for our own species. I personally appreciated how unbiased Freakonomics tried to be in their discussion of the topic.

legalize hunting icelandic politicians instead

On the plus side everyone will shut the fuck up about claims that Chinese research ships are all disguised whaling vessels.

I've only heard about perfumes that once contained whale juices? ...What do these whales produce in terms of raw and or commercial material. or is it for sport these days? not that any of it is okay.

Sanction them. I love Iceland but the way I see it, sanction them and tell them to knock it off. Capitalism sucks but use whatever few means we have in that system to at least right some wrongs.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Animal rights groups and environmentalists have described as “hugely disappointing” the news that Iceland has given the green light for commercial whaling to resume, after a temporary ban introduced this year came to an end.

The Icelandic government said there will be tougher regulations in place – including better equipment, training and increased monitoring – but campaigners said these were “pointless and irrelevant” because whales will still suffer agonising deaths.

In a statement to the Guardian, Iceland’s minister of foodand agriculture, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, said: “With the expiry of the ban, the ministry is now implementing strict and detailed new requirements for hunting including equipment, methods and increased supervision.

The groups stressed that whales already face myriad threats, including pollution, entanglement in fishing nets, ship strikes and the climate crisis.

Ruud Tombrock, the European director of the Humane Society International, said: “It is inexplicable that minister Svavarsdóttir has dismissed the unequivocal scientific evidence that she herself commissioned, demonstrating the brutality and cruelty of commercial whale killing.

In June, Svavarsdóttir suspended whaling until 31 August after a government-commissioned report concluded that the hunt does not comply with Iceland’s animal welfare legislation.

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Who cares if the whales die horribly and the species goes extinct, right? Oh yeah, new "regulations" make it "good" to do the same shit somehow, so no problem.

~~Nuke the whales~~

Give the whales nukes

I propose we give James Cameron total authority over the US 6th Fleet with carte blanche to resolve this.

Do we have any experts in the fishing industry on lemmy? Is whaling really that profitable? Because it's weird to go back on something like whaling if it isn't profitable. Like I know the Japanese are subsidizing it heavily as a point of national pride, but that can hardly be the issue here.

Saw a doc about this that said they could only eat a couple of grams/week because of mercury. What a tragedy.