Norway pursuit of the whaling

In 1986, the International Whaling Commission finally banned almost all whales hunting, dealing a fatal blow to the whaling industry. Unfortunately, in many cases, it was nearly too late. Over the past 30 years, many whale species have been able to recover, but some are still vulnerable, and risk extinction. 

Nowadays, whale hunting is allowed in two categories:

• The cultural hunt. For some communities, whale hunting is part of their culture. For these peoples, hunting isn’t part of an industry, but instead, part of their survival. 

• Hunting for research. Unfortunately, a few countries are still hunting in the name of scientific research. However, in the meantime, no clear research was conducted. Namely, there has been no significant advancement in the understanding of the whale, or new discoveries.

Norway position on this moratorium.

Norway doesn’t fall in any of these two categories and simply decided to not follow this banning decision. Despite this international ban, the country decided to go against this decision and to continue their whaling, but allowing only a certain quota of killing each year (999). 

Norway and Iceland are the only countries who consider themselves exempt from the 1986 decision. As regards to Norway, the country resumed all the whaling in 1993. 

Norway, whale hunting in 2018.

For years, there was a decline in the numbers of the killed whales:

• 660 whales have been killed in 2015
• 432 whales have been killed in 2017.

Per Sandberg, the Norway’s Minister of Fisheries, said that this is the lowest in many years. 

Sandberg took the decision to raise this quota again, and Norway is now increasing it to 1 278 allowed whales killing (a raise of 28%). 

Moreover, Norway is trying to revive this failed industry and want to make it meet Oslo’s quota of 999 but for years it has been dropping, as we can see with the decreasing numbers of whaling boats that’s when from 350 in 1950 down to 11 in 2017. 

Mr Sandberg also said that: « Norway has a viable whaling industry, and I want to make sure that the whaling remains alive », showing his strong will to keep going with the whales hunting, and his will to not stop it anytime soon. 

With the increasing of the allowed killing quota, Norway is also merging fishing zones so that it will help the whales killers to be able to have a better whaling season. 

This is showing that Norway isn’t banning the whaling and in contrast the country is actually helping their whales killers to have better whaling seasons. The country isn’t hiding their intentions and they actually don’t even bother to disguised it.

Norway’s whaling specialist point of view.

From the Norwegian whaling specialist’s perspective, they fail to meet Oslo’s quota because of the global warming. It is making the whales to seek for cold water, thus making them swim much farther than where they used to be. Also, the whaling specialists said that because of the high price of the fuels, they can’t afford to have more whaling boats, also the high price of the fuels is impacting the whaling industry. 

The animals rights activists are suggesting that the decline is caused by the lack of people who wants to eat whales meat. They said that it is an old-fashioned industry and whales hunters have to acknowledged that. 

European on Norway's whaling.

Last september, the European Parliament took the decision to not allow any whale meat to transit through its ports, and will do the necessary to ensure that. 

Fundition hard effort to save the whales.

After more than 14 days of funding, together, we've reached 16% of the final goal.

We still have 84% of the goal to reach to be able to achieve it. We are calling you to keep helping us to save the whales, thus saving our beloved planet. 

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