Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.09.2011, Page 8
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8
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 14 — 2011
Iceland | Whaling
If you've spent some time in Ice-
land this past summer, you may
have seen them: Volunteers in In-
ternational Fund for Animal Wel-
fare (IFAW) T-shirts, handing out
leaflets, accompanied by a person
dressed as a whale's tail. This is
a part of a new campaign started
by the IFAW aimed at tourists who
visit Iceland. However, as UK IFAW
Director Rob Marsland explained
to Grapevine, this isn't a campaign
about shaming and scolding—this
conservationist group has taken a
whole new approach, and so far, it
seems to be working.
The idea began some eight years ago,
when Icelandic began ‘scientific whal-
ing.’ At first, Rob says, IFAW did what
they normally do: filmed whale kills and
started a letter-writing campaign. But
then they did an evaluation of this ap-
proach, and found they didn't get quite
the result they'd hoped for.
“What we'd done is make Iceland
circle the wagons,” Rob says. “So we
had a think, and decided that's not
going to work. What we need to do is
work within Iceland. Wagging the fin-
ger might make you feel good, but it
doesn't work.”
And so, after having a think, they
tried a new approach: “Over the last
eight years, we have tried to participate
in a debate on the wisdom of whaling.
It has been patient work, involving not
being aggressive, and being reason-
able.”
Rob admits that he finds it “embar-
rassing” to see tourists eating whale
meat. “The IFAW exists because mem-
bers from around the world think that
the work we do is fantastic. So I come
here for eight years, and see the same
people who support us adding to con-
sumption of whale meat.”
NORMAL RULES ARE SUSPENDED
By the best estimate the IFAW has at
hand, 40% of minke whale meat is eat-
en by tourists, yet 90% of these same
tourists are against whaling. How does
that happen?
“My feeling is, you're on holidays,”
Rob explains. “Normal rules are sus-
pended. You think eating whale meat is
part of the culture, so it won't make a
difference if I eat it. So it's easy to have
two different thoughts in your brain—
I'm against whaling, and I'm on holiday
so it's OK to eat whale meat—and that's
where ‘Meet Us Don't Eat Us’ came
from. We're not trying to tell tourists
off. We're just trying to get them to join
those two thoughts.”
The campaign they launched has
involved putting leaflets on Reykjavík
Excursion buses, urging tourists “while
dining in Iceland's great restaurants,
consider what you're eating,” the vol-
unteers downtown, and of course a
controversial ad campaign that was set
up in Keflavík airport.
As many may recall, the airport
broke its contract with the IFAW to
have signs up in the airport urging
tourists not to eat whale meat—within
weeks of the campaign being launched,
airport management claimed they had
been deceived, and would never have
signed on with the campaign.
Rob's take on the matter is a bit dif-
ferent. “The bare bones of the facts are:
we approached the airport, said we'd
like to do some advertising, we showed
them the advertising, and they very
happily signed a contract from May to
September. Two weeks after campaign
launched, they said they were very con-
cerned about the content of the cam-
paign and wanted us to take it down.”
This confused Rob. The airport had
seen the full ad campaign—as a series
of published e-mail exchanges would
prove—and had even offered a reduced
rate. Rob believes complaints came in
from minke whalers, and the manager
felt compelled to act. As the IFAW's
money was fully refunded, he takes
this as an admission that there was a
breach of contract, but he doesn't in-
tend to sue. Instead, he wrote to the
manger, offering to conduct another
campaign, while asking what sorts of
changes the airport would like to see
done to the ads.
IS IT WORKING?
The volunteers who have been handing
out leaflets downtown operate within
the heart of the capital, meeting tour-
ists and Icelanders alike on street level.
Over 100.000 leaflets were handed out
in three weeks. So how have tourists—
and Icelanders, too, for that matter—re-
sponded to the campaign?
Quite well, Rob says. “Lots of tour-
ists have made the connection. That
was the kind of messaging that we
wanted. Not 'you're stupid for doing
this' but 'do you really think you should
do this?' Of course there've been some
tourists who've said they're going to try
whale meat, and that's their preroga-
tive, but I think it's important that we've
been able to engage.”
Even the Icelandic response has
been positive. “I've been surprised at
the number of supportive responses.
Not surprised that there have been a
few who make it clear that they're not
in agreement and support whaling. And
very, very pleased that the number of
people who displayed any anger about
it has been very, very small. That's a
sign that there's room for the debate.”
ARE YOU FOR OR AGAINST ICE-
LAND?
Rob believes that how the questions
within the debate are framed has an
impact on how they are answered.
“When you ask an Icelander 'are you
for or against whaling?’ the question
that they hear is 'are you for or against
Iceland?' And I think Iceland's a fan-
tastic place, and wouldn't be a part of
any campaign that said Iceland was a
bad thing. So what we've been trying to
do is separate the idea of Iceland and
whaling, and allow people to love Ice-
land but question whaling."
And questioning whaling is what
Rob does. In particular, it's the eco-
nomics of whaling that intrigues him:
it doesn't seem to be able to make any
money.
“Economics of whaling has always
been a mystery,” he says. There is a
small domestic market for minke meat.
Pre-2008, Icelanders who ate whale
once a month comprised less than 3%
of the population. Today, it's about 5%.
When fin whaling started, the wa-
ters muddied even more. “We were
perplexed, because in 2008, the
amount of fin whale meat being eaten
in Japan was in decline, there is no fin
whale meat being eaten in Iceland, and
yet here's [Kristján] Loftsson [the head
of Iceland's sole whaling company] say-
ing he's going to make lots of money. So
it was confusing to us.”
How does he do it? Essentially,
it works like this: every few months,
Kristján sends fin whale meat to Japan,
where it sits in customs for 3 months
while undergoing toxicity tests. Then it
is sold to a company that Kristján him-
self owns. “I don't use the word 'export-
ing' for what he does with the whale
meat,” Rob says. “I call it 'transferring'.”
A STOCKPILE OF SCIENTIFIC
WHALE
Scientific whaling costs taxpayers
considerable amount of money, not to
mention the time and effort of the for-
eign office conducting PR and damage
control. An economic report done on
how much money could be made from
fin whale meat showed that you would
need a big market and a lot of effort.
But that is all lacking. Instead, there's
one whaler, killing a small number of
whales, and not exporting that much,
building up stockpile in freezers.
The fact that there are a small
number of fin whales being killed in
Icelandic waters, Rob believes, has no
bearing on their purported status as
critically endangered creatures. “Fins
are internationally recognised to be a
critically endangered species,” he says.
“To argue that it's OK to do whaling in
Iceland is to have a very microscopic
view of the world. Iceland is respected
the world over for its scientific knowl-
edge of the oceans. So for some to
contend, 'Well, they're not endangered
here' isn't very scientific.”
Finally, Rob asks that we consider
how that minke whale steak is put on a
restaurant's plate.
“IFAW thinks that if an animal has
to be killed, then it should be done
humanely. The International Whaling
Commission has had scientists work-
ing for years on ways to humanely kill
a whale, and they've never been able
to come up with one. If there were a
slaughterhouse where cows were al-
lowed to roam freely over a rugged
terrain, and a man was sent in with
a crossbow to kill them, it would be
closed tomorrow.”
Whether or not IFAW's softer, more
friendlier campaign will have an impact
on how much whale meat tourists eat
remains to be seen. But if initial reac-
tions are any indication, whale steaks
may soon become endangered.
No Finger-Pointing
PAUL FONTAINE
UK IFAW Director Rob Marsland talks about Iceland, whaling, and tourists
“When you ask an Icelander 'are you for or against
whaling?’ the question that they hear is 'are you for or
against Iceland?”
In keeping with one of Mr. Marsland's arguments: If you could choose between a life of freedom
that ended in a day of horrible suffering, or a life of brutal imprisonment that was ended 'in a
humanitarian manner', which would you choose? letters@grapevine.is