Reykjavík Grapevine - 13.07.2012, Page 10

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2012
Mountaineers of Iceland • Skútuvogur 12E • 104 Reykjavík • Iceland
Telephone: +354 580 9900 Ice@mountaineers.is • www.mountaineers.is • www. activity.is
SUPER JEEP & SNOWMOBILE TOURS
Are you a tourist? Do you like the idea on feasting on yummy, intelligent
whale? Or does that offend you, yeah?
“Quick! We’re missing them!”
22-year-old Jongmi Lim says.
A herd of six baby-faced volunteers
hustle across the harbour toward
the group of tourists leaving their
whale watching boat. They manage
to snag one family before the rest
of the tourists shuffle away. “Would
you like to help save the whales?”
Jongmi, who is South Korean, asks
a Swedish couple and their son. “All
you have to do is write your name
and country here.”
They oblige. It’s the volunteers’ third
catch of the day.
The volunteers—donning grey rain-
coats with the turquoise International
Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) logo—
are patrolling the Faxaflói Bay harbour,
searching for foreign visitors who will
pledge to not eat whale during their
trip. One Italian girl dresses in a heavy
whale tail costume, her face peaking
through the front. These are IFAW’s
foot soldiers in the organisation’s sec-
ond year of the war on whaling—also
known as the “Meet Us, Don’t Eat Us”
campaign.
It’s their second day on the job, and
it sometimes shows. They approach
many people timidly, and they haven’t
quite nailed down their sales pitch for
why these tourists should not order a
whale steak for lunch. “I’ve been trying
out different sentences,” says 21-year-
old Joanna Blasko, who is from Swe-
den. “Sometimes we ask ‘Have you
made your whale promise?’ But that
can confuse people so then we just ask
if they want to save the whale.”
FIRING UP THE CAMPAIGN
Sigursteinn Másson, a journalist-
turned-activist who manages the anti-
whaling campaign for IFAW, says this
year’s version of the “Meet Us, Don’t
Eat Us” campaign is bigger, complete
with more volunteers and a research
vessel that will study whales this fall.
The group will push both for sweep-
ing and incremental changes to whal-
ing practices. Most immediately, they
hope to influence the ministry to end
whaling in Faxaflói Bay and in some
northern waters, he says.
While animal conservation laws ban
whaling in most of the world’s waters,
Icelandic ships have hunted whales
commercially most recently since 2006,
flying in the face of a 1986 moratorium
on commercial whaling by the Interna-
tional Whaling Commission (IWC). Ásta
Einarsdóttir, an alternate commissioner
for Iceland to the IWC and a top admin-
istrator at the Ministry of Fisheries and
Agriculture, says the country supports
“sustainable utilisation of all marine re-
sources,” including whale. The ministry
set the minke whale quota at 216 this
year, a number she says is in line with
advice from Hafró, Iceland’s Marine Re-
search Institute.
The goal for this crop of volunteers
is to gather 2,000 signatures in two
weeks to bring to The Ministry, a lob-
bying tactic in the organisation’s efforts
to curb whaling in Iceland. By the end
of the summer, Sigursteinn hopes the
campaign will collect 10,000 total sig-
natures.
The fifteen volunteers who live to-
gether crammed in a one-bathroom
house in Reykjavík, are recruited by
the Icelandic non-profit SEEDS, which
ships them in and out of the country in
two-week blocks. They say they want
to end a practice they call cruel and
inhumane. “I’ve always been interested
in animal welfare so I wanted to come
save whales,” Joanna says. “You have
to fight this and do this kind of a project
where there is whaling.”
ANY ATTENTION IS GOOD
ATTENTION
But the campaign may be doing more
harm than good to the anti-whaling
cause. At least, that’s what IFAW’s main
foe, Gunnar Jónsson, says.
Gunnar manages and owns Félag
hrefnuveiðimanna, Iceland’s Minke
Whalers Association, and maintains
that his profits are actually rising this
year because of the advocacy against
whaling. “We’ve only had more restau-
rants buying more whale meat because
tourists now know that whale is sold
in restaurants. We actually have had
more demand for whale meat after they
started this,” he says. “The nearby res-
taurants like the Sea Baron are selling
more whale meat so I think they’re just
shooting themselves in the foot.”
The minke whale, which has over-
taken the fin whale as the primary
whale now hunted in Iceland, is not en-
dangered. The about 5-tonne mammal
is the most abundant whale species in
the world—a lonely survivor as hump-
back and fin whale populations have
dwindled.
This year, the minke whale is the
only whale in town for IFAW to rally
around. Iceland’s sole fin whaling com-
pany Hvalur hf. announced in May that
they would not hunt fin whales this year
because of pay disputes with fishermen
and a sagging demand for fin whales in
Japan.
About 174,000 minke whales swim
in the North Atlantic, according to the
IWC’s most recent estimate in 2001.
Gunnar says his team of ten whalers—
which make up Iceland’s only minke
whale company—want to kill 80 minke
whales this season. “People don’t know
much about whaling and when they
talk about whaling it is just emotion,”
Gunnar says.
Ásta says the government doesn’t
care who is eating whale—whether it’s
Icelanders or tourists—as long as the
hunt is sustainable and based on sci-
entific advice. “This is a free trade,” she
adds. “We are happy if tourists want to
consume whale because it is very good
meat and very good quality.”
TUGGING ON TOURISTS’
HEARTSTRINGS
Sigursteinn is hesitant to cast Gunnar
and his company as the enemy, or get
caught up in too much of that emotion
that often shrouds animal rights fights.
He’s even invited whale hunters to the
organisation’s receptions, he says.
(They declined).
“Information is the most important
thing when it comes to all this. Every-
one can have their opinion, but at the
end of the day, the facts will sink in,” he
says. And to Sigursteinn, the facts are
clear. He says Iceland’s whaling prac-
tices are propped up by the country’s
budding tourism sector. Foreigners
are the ones ordering whale in restau-
rants—not Icelanders—he says.
When the volunteers approach tour-
ists on the soggy morning in the har-
bour, they play up the cruelty of killing
whales. The whale costume that one
volunteer wears personifies the animal.
“Don’t eat me,” the girl cries as tourists
walk by.
Whale watching businesses are on
their side of the anti-whaling activists,
too. The morning that the volunteers
head out to canvass the harbour, they
huddle around Sigursteinn on a boat
emblazoned with the logo of Iceland’s
largest whale watching operator,
Elding. As they walk up the steps to the
boat’s bow, they face an Elding poster
that outlines the reasons why Iceland’s
tourists shouldn’t order whale at res-
taurants.
“They [tourists] very much enjoy
seeing the whales alive in the Faxaflói
Bay, but then they go to restaurants
in Reykjavík and contribute to bru-
tal whale killings by ordering a whale
steak because they think it’s okay once
in their life to taste a whale steak in
Iceland,” Sigursteinn says. “It’s as if
they [tourists] were in Congo and they
would say it’s okay to taste a gorilla be-
cause they’re here only once.”
THE CRUx OF THE KILLINGS
Although the minke whales are not en-
dangered, Sigursteinn and the volun-
teers adhere to one strict belief: Killing
whales is inherently cruel. That mantra
has been trumpeted by anti-whaling
activists for years, who say research
shows that whales don’t die until at
least two minutes after they’re hit with
an explosive harpoon. “The only way to
kill it instantly is to hit the head. If you
hit it in the side, the back, it can be a
very long death struggle,” Sigursteinn
says.
But Gunnar is steadfast, claiming
that the kills are quick and painless
“99% of the time.” “When the harpoon
gets into the whale, the explosive part
goes off and it stops the heart immedi-
ately so the whale doesn’t suffer,” Gun-
nar says.
Both claims are tough to back up.
Reporters have consistently been de-
nied access to whaling ships, and Gun-
nar declined to give The Grapevine
a trip on board. Sigursteinn says his
group tried to videotape whaling tactics
in Faxaflói Bay two years ago, but the
whalers quickly turned back to shore
once they saw the activists filming. “If
it’s all that perfect, you know, if it’s the
best way to slaughter a big mammal,
why not show it?” Sigursteinn says.
Iceland | Whales
Foreigners On The Frontlines Of Whaling Battle
Words
Cory Weinberg
Photography
Juli Vol
“It’s like if they [tourists]
were in Congo and they
would say it’s okay to taste
a gorilla because they’re
here only once.”
Anti-whaling activists turn up the heat in tourist-on-tourist
campaign to stop whale killings