Whaling season cancelled – again
25 April 2025
It's going to be a quiet summer in Icelandic waters. For the second year in a row, Iceland's largest commercial whale hunting company, Hvalur hf., will stay in the docks. The company has cancelled the season on its own initiative: it's a bad year for whale hunting business, they say.
According to its CEO, unfavourable product prices in Japan, where the overwhelming majority of Iceland's whale meat is sold, and global economic uncertainty have made whaling unprofitable this year.
The rest of the market remains small – there is very little interest or demand for whale meat in Iceland itself, and commercial whaling was banned in most of the world in 1986, with Norway the only remaining country besides Japan and Iceland.
Is it the end of the story for whale hunting as we've known it in Europe? Probably not. At the end of 2024, Hvalur hf. was granted a five-year whaling license, which leaves the option open of restarting whaling in the summer of 2026, if the company deems it suitable.
 | Axel Helgi Ívarsson Whale hunting continues to make waves in Icelandic (and European) society. In 2023, in a political decision attempting to end it, the fisheries minister announced a temporary suspension. Local support for whaling has been waning, but it is still a divisive issue politically, economically, and socially within the country. For Icelanders, it's not even a deeply rooted tradition, as it is in the Faroe Islands. Until the mid-20th century, it was mainly other countries that hunted around Iceland. Nevertheless, it is hard to predict when whaling in Iceland will finally end. The government has stated that it will ''review'' the current whaling laws during its term in office. Still, it will be a cumbersome task to get changes through the parliament whenever it comes to that. |
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