FEATURE - In Iceland whales may be worth more alive than dead
Date: 28-Jun-02
Country: ICELAND
Author: Sigga Hagalin
A small group of people stands in silence on deck, staring at the sea surface, ignoring the fine weather, the birds soaring around the boat, and the line of mountains framing the bay.
Finally a loud shout breaks the silence.
"Twelve o'clock! Twelve o'clock!" the guide cries out in English. "We have a minke whale at twelve o'clock!"
People run to the front of the boat, brandishing cameras, and catch a glimpse of an enormous, sleek, black body, complete with a crooked fin, that slides to the surface and back into the darkness below some 10 metres (33 feet) ahead.
The passengers are whale watchers, not whale hunters armed with harpoons, and their presence highlights the dilemma faced by this north Atlantic island caught between the traditions of a proud and independent way of life and the potential of tourism.
"Looks like she's diving," the guide shouts in Icelandic to the steering cabin, where the captain has stuck his bearded face out of a window. "Did you see that hump on her?"
The captain nods.
"When the minke puts on a hump, that means she's going to dive, and we won4t see her for a while," the guide explains.
FRIENDLY AND CURIOUS
The 10-tonne minke, the smallest and most common of the baleen, or toothless, whales, are friendly and curious, and sometimes stick their heads out of the water to get a closer look at the humans on whale watching trips, grinning an enormous smile before plunging back into the water.
Passengers on Huni II have a 97-98 percent chance of seeing a whale on the three-hour-long tour the boat takes from the small port of Hafnafjordur, on the west coast near Reykjavik.
"This close to land, we see mostly small baleen whales like the minke, or small toothed whales such as dolphins and porpoises," said guide Hafthor Hlynur Valdimarsson. "To see great whales, such as humpbacks or sperm whales, you must usually go on some eight or 10-hour trips out to the open sea."
Huni II is a small family business, run by former fisherman Thorvaldur Skaftason, who captains the ship, and his wife, Erna Sigurbjornsdottir. The guide is Skaftason's nephew, a computer scientist with a passion for whales.
They bought the 40-year-old oak boat five years ago, rescuing it from the scrap-yard, and restoring it lovingly.
The business depends on whales in Faxafloi being numerous, visible and fearless, and they have become increasingly so since Icelanders stopped whaling in 1989.
But this has not changed Skaftason's opinion on whaling, a view he shares with about 75 percent of the Icelandic nation.
"I think we should begin whaling again," Skaftason said brusquely. "I don4t think anybody should tell us what to do in our own waters.
"I4m not an opportunist," he added. "I seriously doubt that whaling would damage my business, but even if it did, I still think we should have the right to use this resource like any other in a sensible manner."
Skaftason, like many other Icelanders, still considers the International Whaling Commission's 1986 moratorium on whaling as an insult to Iceland's national sovereignty and pride.
Iceland's turbulent relationship with the commission hit the headlines last month, when its bid to rejoin was turned down at the annual meeting in Japan.
Iceland walked out of the whaling authority a decade ago, angered by the lack of agreement on revising the moratorium. It had made it clear it wanted to rejoin while not recognising the moratorium - something rejected by anti-whaling members.
Iceland was allowed to hunt 60 whales a year for scientific purposes from 1986 to 1989, when all whaling was banned. Unlike Norway and Japan, Iceland had not protested against the moratorium, and was therefore bound by it.
Whaling was never an important industry in Iceland, where whale products amounted to only 1.5 percent of exports in the years before the moratorium.
Iceland's strong reaction to the whaling ban was spurred by environmental organisations that calle
