{"id":487664,"date":"2026-06-20T23:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T23:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/487664\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T23:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T23:07:09","slug":"iceland-resumes-whale-hunting-after-two-year-hiatus-amid-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/487664\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceland resumes whale hunting after two-year hiatus amid protest"},"content":{"rendered":"

The International Whaling Commission banned the commercial killing of whales in 1986 amid alarm at the declining stock of the marine mammals.<\/p>\n

Iceland and Norway are the only two countries still openly practising commercial whaling in defiance of the moratorium.<\/p>\n

Japan hunts the ocean giants for what it claims is \u201cscientific\u201d purposes, even if most of the meat ends up on the market for consumption.<\/p>\n

Iceland\u2019s Marine and Freshwater Research Institute has recommended a reduction in the number of whales harpooned this season, which runs from mid-June to mid-September.<\/p>\n

The 2026 annual number of fin whales killed should not exceed 150 animals, a 28% drop on the recommended annual catch for the period 2018\u20132025, it said.<\/p>\n

The fin whale is the second largest animal on Earth after the blue whale.<\/p>\n

The institute set an annual quota of 168 animals for the minke whale hunt this year, a 23% drop.<\/p>\n

The Government is due this northern autumn to table a bill on banning whaling altogether.<\/p>\n

– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The International Whaling Commission banned the commercial killing of whales in 1986 amid alarm at the declining stock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[74,534,104686,13313,36567,10937,32655,26322,244581,440,30716,1073,111,139,69,25394,25995,15267,27793,147,60776,1961,1231,686,26010,244582,406],"class_list":["post-487664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-after","tag-amid","tag-campaigners","tag-giant","tag-hiatus","tag-hunt","tag-hunting","tag-iceland","tag-icelands","tag-local","tag-mammals","tag-media","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-protest","tag-remaining","tag-reported","tag-resumes","tag-science","tag-ships","tag-this","tag-twoyear","tag-week","tag-whale","tag-whaling","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}