David @ Tokyo

A rare breed they may be - no, not the whales, the Australians that have enough up top to realise this - but not completely non-existant.

Australian Ross Gibson is the Honorary Consul General for Iceland, and when it comes to matters concerning whales and whaling:
"I think what Iceland thinks"

Me too!

From the article:

Mr Gibson, who lives in Canberra, said eating whale was a cultural practice in Iceland: "Iceland has just 1 per cent arable land. They need to fish. They've eaten whales for so long."

Mr Gibson said he received 10 to 20 letters a month from angry schoolchildren, outraged at the Scandinavian country's pro-whaling stance.

He sends them a three-page fact sheet detailing Iceland's position on whaling.

It claims Iceland hunts minke whales to study the ecological interactions between them and other marine species, as well as to study their biology and feeding habits.

The three-page whale-killing defence goes on to say Iceland is "extremely attentive to the conservation of marine species" and that killing several dozen minkes each year will have no impact on the 67,000-strong minke whale population in the Central North Atlantic Ocean.


Elsewhere, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade notes that:

Given the importance of fisheries to Iceland, it also plays an active role in various regional fisheries organisations which have agreed to jointly manage certain fish stocks in international waters.

And yet despite this Australia still chooses to politik on about scientific whaling, accusing the Icelanders of environmental destruction.