In front of an Icelandic whaling ship, during our first expedition in 1978
Our flagship, the SV Rainbow Warrior, has arrived in Iceland - twenty five years after Greenpeace's first visit - to protest against whaling.
Iceland recently announced the resumption of a 'scientific whaling' programme. We believe there is absolutely no reason to go whaling. We also refute the Icelandic government's claim that it is whaling in the name of 'science' - considering the whale meat is likely to be sold on the commercial market.
The Rainbow Warrior will be touring around different Icelandic ports, and its crew will be welcoming local people on board, and hosting public meetings to present the case against whaling.
When we launched our whales campaign, commercial hunting was the single biggest threat to cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises). Since then, many other threats have emerged. Now, the planet's oceans and the life they contain are facing a crisis. A return to commercial whaling would be devastating.
Cetaceans are threatened by global warming, ozone depletion, toxic chemicals, noise pollution, overfishing and ship strikes - all of which are symptoms of a wider oceans crisis.
Unsustainable fishing practices
Overfishing is perhaps the single greatest threat to the oceans. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that 71-78% of the world's fish stocks are fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted. Cetaceans, far from being the cause of collapsing fish stocks (as claimed by Iceland and other whaling nations), are themselves the victims of overfishing and industrialised fisheries.
Toxic pollution
Toxic chemicals are a major and insidious threat to cetaceans. Of prime concern are groups of chemicals like persistent organic pollutants (POPs) which includes PCBs and DDT, certain heavy metals like mercury and the endocrine disrupting chemicals. Many POPS concentrate in fatty tissue like blubber and as a consequence high body burdens have been found in cetaceans. The build up of toxic contaminants in cetacean species is also a health risk for consumers of whale and dolphin products.
Ocean noise
Cetaceans rely on their hearing for survival. Noise pollution from shipping, seismic surveys, oil drilling and marine construction and active sonar devices may be negatively impacting on cetacean populations. In extreme cases noise pollution may cause actual physiological damage but more often it interferes with the natural behaviour of the animals. Noise pollution may for instance disrupt with normal communication by masking calls or displace animals from critical habitat such as feeding or rearing grounds. One of the most worrying sources of marine noise pollution is the deployment of low-frequency active sonar (LFAS). Developed by the military to detect enemy submarines, LFAS uses the same low frequencies that whales use to communicate and are most acoustically sensitive to.
Ship strikes
Ship collisions are a significant threat to some local populations. For example, a high number of collisions between fin whales and high speed ferries in the waters between the French mainland and Corsica have occured. These waters are the preferred summer feeding grounds for the fins. For the North Atlantic right whale reducing ship strikes is essential if the species is to survive into the next century.
Global warming The devastating impacts of climate change caused by humans are already being felt across the globe and the oceans and their inhabitants are not immune. Cetacean species are affected by temperature rises in polar regions. This results in a reduction in sea ice, which impacts on the entire Antarctic marine food web, including the supply of krill, which feeds small crustaceans.
Ozone depletion
Depletion of the ozone layer could also be decreasing the amount of krill available for whales to eat. The increase in ultraviolet (UV) radiation affects the marine ecosystem in a number of detrimental ways, producing a knock-on effect on the overall ecology and marine food web.
Given these threats - and the undeniable fact that whales are worth more to Iceland alive than dead - we call on the Icelandic Government to reverse its decision to resume whaling. Iceland is becoming a tourist magnet, and its whale watching industry is booming. More than 277,000 people visited Iceland in 2001 and an estimated one third of those visitors went whale-watching. According to ENN, a dozen firms have sprung up in Iceland over the past decade, generating around US$8.5 million in revenue in 2001. Commercial whaling brought in US$3 million to US$4 million annually between 1986 and 1989, when commercial hunts were stopped.
The Icelandic Tourist Association voted in April of this year to strengthen its stand against whaling. One whale-watching village hung its flag at half mast when the Fisheries Ministry made its unpopular announcement.
