Political whaling

We had commercial whaling, scientific whaling, aboriginal whaling.

Here is a fourth category: political whaling.

The Icelandic whaling fleet has caught its first fin whale this week-end, after a licence was issued last week by the Icelandic government.

There is already a large stockpile of unsold whale meat in Iceland, where there is a very limited market for whale meat to say the least.

In modern times, the main market for Icelandic whale meat has always been Japan. But now the Japanese have got a large stockpile of whale meat from their own whaling operations to deal with. So they are not keen in importing whale meat from Iceland and Norway (which they say is too contaminated for safe human consumption).

Increasingly, whales are being killed only to make noisy political statements.