REYKJAVIK: Icelandic whaling company Hvalur said on Tuesday it would resume its controversial hunt of endangered fin whales after a two-year suspension, sparking angry protests from animal rights activists.

The only company in Iceland that hunts fin whales, Hvalur packed away its harpoons in 2016 because of commercial difficulties in Japan, its biggest market, where consumption has been in decline.

Tokyo also introduced restrictive import regulations, notably new standards to measure levels of chemical pollutant PCB in whale meat.

“We are going to resume commercial whaling because the Japanese bureaucracy seems to have loosened up and the Japanese authorities have listened to us,” said Hvalur chief executive Kristjan Loftsson.

In addition, Hvalur said it plans to collaborate with researchers from the University of Iceland to develop medicinal products made of whale meat aimed at combating iron deficiency — a condition that affects almost 30 per cent of the global population, or two billion people, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).Iceland’s whaling season opens on June 10.

In 2015, during the last hunt, Hvalur killed a record 155 fin whales.

A poll published in October 2017 by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) indicated that 35.4 per cent of Icelanders supported the fin whale hunt, compared to 42 per cent in 2016.

The volcanic island has only one other whaling company, IP-Utgerd Ltd, which specialises in hunting Minke whales, a much smaller species.

Iceland and Norway are the only nations that openly defy the International Whaling Commission’s 1986 moratorium on hunting whales. Iceland resumed whaling in 2006.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2018