Hear from Recruitment Manager, Jack Barber, on his return from an anti-whaling campaign in Iceland.

Sea Shepherd UK are a registered marine conservation charity and I’ve been a Sea Shepherd volunteer for around three years now, but on 19 August this year I got my first taste of an overseas campaign when I joined the crew of Operation Northern Exposure in Iceland.

The campaign aim was to expose the cruelty of the commercial hunting of fin whales around Iceland by Hvalur hf, a whaling company owned by Kristjan Loftsson.

For two weeks I helped track Kristjan’s two whaling ships and documented the 19 fin whales killed during my time there. This was both physically and mentally exhausting. If we weren’t documenting the whales getting butchered at the whaling station, we were usually keeping watch for the boats to enter the fjord, at all hours of the day and through the night, covering around 25 miles of the coastline.

At the time of writing, they’re up to around 100 whales killed this year with four weeks still left in the whaling season.

Although this whaling is a commercial activity, we know it’s not profitable. Kristjan sells 98% of his whale to Japan, but every year he makes a loss, and the business is only propped up by his other investments.

Kristjan’s ships will head out to sea, sometimes immediately after dropping off one or two dead fin whales and they will hunt using explosive tipped harpoons to kill or incapacitate. When the whales aren’t killed on impact, they will either fire another harpoon, or let the whale drown or suffocate whilst tied to the boat.

We’ve seen up to 5 harpoons in 1 whale, and it takes 8 minutes to reload, plus time to decide if they will fire again.

The image of each whale’s face as their lifeless body is dragged up the slipway to be butchered will never leave me. They reach up to 22 metres long and 90 tonnes in weight. The staff at the whaling station looked like ants in comparison next to the whales, and the whale bodies were often severely battered by the rough seas knocking them against the boats they were tied to for around 12 hours on their journey to be butchered.

One of the saddest memories I will have is watching around 300 containers of whale meat thrown into pits to be turned into oil and meal, as it was past the point of being sellable to Japan. As if the killing wasn’t needless enough already! It was infuriating to watch it get turned into something we can easily get from plants.

And if the cruelty of these whales wasn’t enough to stop this blood sport, they are also crucial to our fight against climate breakdown. Great whale waste (the poo) feeds phytoplankton, which provides somewhere between 50 and 70% of Earth’s oxygen. Did you know a 1% increase in phytoplankton in our oceans is roughly equivalent to planting 2 billion trees?

I really don’t want to have to go back next year to repeat this exercise but it’s likely Kristjan will be allowed to continue, as his current licence runs until end of 2023.

However, we know the Icelandic government do not fully support this activity and we’re hopeful they will not renew past 2023.

What can you do to help?

Please write a polite email to the Icelandic government to ask they stop Kristjan’s whaling in Icelandic waters. Without people taking this action, my efforts and those of all the crew will be in vain.

Find more information and contact details for the Icelandic government: Sea Shepard UK – Operation Northern Exposure 2022. (Warning: contains images of dead whales.)