Whale Watching - Whaling and Whale Watching

Whaling and Whale Watching

The three major whaling nations (Norway, Japan and Iceland) have large and growing whale watching industries. Indeed Iceland had the fastest-growing whale watching industry in the world between 1994 and 1998.

Many conservationists argue that a whale is worth more alive and watched than dead. The goal is to persuade their governments to curtail whaling activities. This debate continues at the International Whaling Commission, particularly since whaling countries complain that the scarcity of whale meat and other products has increased their value. However, the whale meat market has collapsed, and in Japan the government subsidizes the market through distribution in schools and other promotion. In 1997 2,000 tonnes of whale meat were sold for $30m - a 10 tonne Minke Whale would thus have been worth $150,000. There is no agreement as to how to value a single animal, though it is probably much higher. However, it is clear from most coastal communities that are involved in whale watching that profits can be made and are more horizontally distributed throughout the community than if the animals were killed by a whaling industry.

Upon the resumption of whaling in Iceland in August 2003, pro-whaling groups, such as fishermen who argue that increased stocks of whales deplete fish populations, suggested that sustainable whaling and whale watching could live side-by-side. Whale watching lobbyists, such as Húsavík Whale Museum curator Asbjorn Bjorgvinsson, counter that the most inquistive whales, which approach boats very closely and provide much of the entertainment on whale-watching trips, will be the first to be taken. Pro-whaling organisations such as the High North Alliance on the other hand, claim that whale watching is not profitable and that some whale-watching companies in Iceland are surviving only because they receive funding from anti-whaling organizations.