The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has pulled back from a bid to try to halt Iceland’s controversial commercial whaling operations.
The organisation had been planning to send its ship, Farley Mowat, north to Iceland to intervene and disrupt whaling activities and focus the world’s attention on Iceland’s planned killing of 60 piked (Minke) and nine fin whales.
Two months ago he declared: “We have an ongoing commitment to end whaling and we will not rest until this goal has been accomplished. We cannot and we must not allow them to destroy these whales, and therefore, we have no alternative but to put our lives and our ship on the line for the defense of the whales of the North Atlantic.
The Society, which took on the Japanese last year, said that after a 20 year absence Iceland had returned to whaling in flagrant violation of the International Whaling Commission’s moratorium on the commercial hunting of whales.
Meanwhile, the Iceland Marine Research Institute has just finished a count of fin whales as part of a co-operative project with Norway, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Canada and Russia. The result is that the fin whale stock appears to be at a record high, claims the Institute.
This thought to be is the most extensive count of whale stocks that has ever been undertaken and a special emphasis has been put on determining the size of the stock.
According to whale expert, G
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