Iceland's whaling companies will not carry out ANY hunting this summer for a second straight year, partly due to coronavirus
- IP-Utgerd said it was no longer profitable and would hang up harpoons for good
- Hunt had become too expensive after a no-fishing coastal zone was extended
- Hvalur postponed hunt due to social distancing measures at processing plants
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Iceland's two whaling companies will skip the whale hunt this summer for the second straight year, in part due to coronavirus.
One firm, IP-Utgerd, said it was no longer profitable and it would hang up its harpoons for good, while Hvalur postponed this summer's hunt due to social distancing measures in force at its meat processing plants.
The restrictions in force to tackle Covid-19 make harvesting the whale meat in Icelandic factories difficult.
Icelandic whaling is limited to the summer months. The announcement means no whales will be hunted off the subarctic coasts of Iceland for the second year in a row.
A large minke whale unloaded at Kushiro Port in Japan on the first day commercial whaling resumed, July, 2019
IP-Utgerd, which specialises in hunting minke whales, told AFP it was no longer financially viable to hunt for whales in Icelandic waters.
'I'm never going to hunt whales again, I'm stopping for good,' managing director Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson said.
The hunt had become too expensive after a no-fishing coastal zone was extended, requiring whalers to go even further offshore, he said.
Meanwhile, Hvalur, which hunts fin whales, the biggest species after the blue whale, said it was cancelling the season due to export woes and, to a lesser degree, restrictions linked to the new coronavirus.
Hvalur's chief executive Kristjan Loftsson told daily Morgunbladid the decision was mainly due to stiff competition with Japan, the main market for whale meat consumption and where commercial whaling resumed in 2019.
Pictured: The grim reality - a large harpoon canon used by the likes of IP-Utgerd and Hvalur for hunting whales
Loftsson said food safety requirements for imported meat were more stringent than for local products, rendering Icelandic exports more difficult.
In addition, he said Icelandic whale meat processing plants would have trouble carrying out their tasks due to social distancing restrictions implemented by authorities to combat the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2018, the last year Iceland's whalers went out, a total of 146 fin whales and six minke whales were harpooned.
Iceland resumed commercial whaling in 2003 despite the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) 1986 moratorium, which it had opposed.
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