Whale-In, Whale-Out

Will the economics of Icelandic whaling be its undoing?

On April 11, 2025, Kristján Loftsson, CEO of Hvalur hf., was quoted as saying his company would not be sending his whaling ships out this summer to hunt fin whales. For just over three weeks, or until Gunnar Torfason, CEO of Tjaldtangi ehf., announced that his company was planning to hunt minke whales this summer, it looked like no whaling would take place in Iceland this year.

Both Hvalur hf., Kristján’s company, and Tjaldtangi ehf., Gunnar’s company, were granted renewable five-year whaling licenses last November to kill 209 and 217 whales per year respectively, a controversial move by then-outgoing Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson during a caretaker government, when, traditionally no significant decisions are made.

Torfason told Vísir that his company will hunt minke whales this summer, and their plan is to “start with one. That is one at a time,” and to sell the meat to buyers around Iceland.

The domestic market for whale meat

There are only a handful of restaurants in Reykjavík that still sell whale meat, mostly to tourists who have been sold on the myth that eating whale meat is an Icelandic culinary tradition. In recent years these restaurants have been selling minke whale bought from Norway.

“It’s mostly Americans,” says a waiter at Íslenski Barinn which still serves fin whales. “They go whale watching, then they come and eat whale.”

“It’s very sad,” says Valgerður Árnadóttir, head of Hvalavinir, a leading organisation fighting whaling, about the decision to hunt minke whales. “It doesn’t align with modern times, people don’t want whaling, we are not eating whale meat. I think it’s a power move to make [Kristján] Loftsson’s case stronger. I am still hoping they won’t go hunting, I don’t see they have a market, the restaurants don’t need Icelandic whale meat.”

“It’s mostly Americans, they go whale watching, then they come and eat whale.”

Hvalavinir has been running a campaign to get restaurants to stop serving whale meat, and sent a letter signed by 140 artists calling on the restaurants to take whale off the menu.

“When we started the campaign this spring, we had ten restaurants on the list, three already took whale meat off their menu, so seven remain; we are in talks with one who will probably do it soon,” Valgerður adds.

Minke whales were hunted in Iceland until 2019, when, after more than a decade of protest, including a Meet Us Don’t Eat Us campaign aimed at tourists, and the extension of a whale sanctuary around Faxaflói bay, it became too costly to hunt.

Whale watching & whale sanctuaries

Whale tourism generates millions per year for Iceland, and the Icelandic Tourism Association and the Icelandic Whale Watching Association have recently proposed that the waters around Ísafjörður, which also has a growing whale tourism business, become a whale sanctuary like Faxaflói bay.

Iceland, however, is far off the mark from any meaningful protection of its wildlife and natural resources.  Though Iceland has agreed to the 30-by-30 declaration — a UN Convention on Biological Diversity framework signed by 190 countries to protect 30% of the land and sea by 2030 — less than 1% of the land and sea around Iceland is currently protected.

Has Iceland done enough, I asked Arni Finnsson, Chair of the Board at Iceland Nature Conservation Association. “No, not by far,” he says. “One thought behind 30 by 30 is to strengthen the resilience of ocean ecosystems, under strain from ocean warming and acidification.”

“Product price trends in our main market, Japan, have been unfavourable recently and getting worse, making the price of our products so low that it is not justifiable to fish.”

David Attenborough, who celebrates his 99th birthday this month with a new film, Ocean, that will open in Iceland on May 8th, has said about the ocean and the whales, “It’s not just the future of the whale that today lies in our hands. It’s the survival of the natural world in all parts of the living planet. We can now destroy, or we can cherish. The choice is ours.”

The international market for whale meat

The economics of whaling seems to be what sank Kristján Loftsson’s boats this summer. Japan is his primary market for fin whale. Kristján told Morgunblaðið in April that “product price trends in our main market, Japan, have been unfavourable recently and getting worse, making the price of our products so low that it is not justifiable to fish.”

Last year, Japan launched a whaling mother ship, with a quota of 60 fin whales, 70% less than Iceland’s current quota. At a press conference in Tokyo in October, Hideki Tokoro, the CEO of Japan’s largest whaling company, Kyodo Senpaku, said they don’t plan to import whale meat from Iceland in 2025.

Whether this summer marks a quiet ending to fin whale hunting in Iceland, or is just another chapter in the whaling saga, remains to be seen.

The uncertain future of whaling in Iceland

The resumption of minke whale hunting is likely to create problems for Iceland on the world stage. Studies have furthermore pointed to a population decline around the coast of Iceland.

Commercial whaling has been banned by the International Whaling Commission for almost 40 years, and Icelandic whaling puts the country in violation of that agreement, as well as other international agreements, including CITES, which regulates the trade of endangered species, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the US Pelly Amendment.

A governmental working group that has been studying Iceland’s international obligations as they relate to whaling has just submitted their findings, which are not public yet.

According to a poll conducted by Maskína in 2023, 51% of Icelanders are opposed to whaling. Time will tell whether the report will provide the impetus for Parliament to act on the wishes of the majority of Icelanders and end commercial whaling.