Whale hunt gets go ahead from Icelandic government

Whale hunt gets go ahead from Icelandic government :

"Greenpeace today strongly criticised the Icelandic government' s decision to issue quotas to hunt whales for the third year running. The government has just granted permission for 39 minke whales to be killed in the 2005 hunt. The Icelandic go ahead comes just 2 weeks after so-called 'scientific whaling' was condemned by the International Whaling Commission at its 2005 meeting in Ulsan, Korea.

Greenpeace International oceans campaigner John Frizell said: 'Iceland's whaling programme provides no money, no useful science, and could seriously damage both the country's tourist industry and its international reputation. What's more, domestic public opinion increasingly supports whale watching rather than whale killing.'"

What use are the whales to Iceland if they really have no real use for them.

Support whale watching and help support these organizations that are trying to eliminate whaling.

Gary

You can't stop everything bad from happening

Federal officials to investigate reports of injured orca: "The National Marine Fisheries service said Thursday it will investigate reports of an orca injured in a collision with a whale-watching boat off San Juan Island last week."

Apparently the orca that was injured bumped into the boat... All the boats in the area were stopped.

From the article the whale watch tour company seems to have been part of Whale Watch Operators Association Northwest, which follows very strict whale watching guidelines.

Hopefully the damage isn't too serious and the whale heals quickly, as is mentioned in the article.

Gary

The best year for for right whales!

It's a good year for right whale calving: "This is one of the best years in recent memory for right whale calving, with 28 mother-calf pairs sighted so far, government biologists say."

What great news, the right whales are doing great. Hopefully, their population growth continues to go this way.

Gary

How old is that whale?

Australian researchers develop new method to determine whales' age: "Australian scientists are developing a new method of determining the age of humpback whales which can avoid killing the mammals in previous methods"

Kudos to the Australians for researching this. I'm not entirely too certain why we need to know how old the whales are. But since research seems to find it an important matter we shouldn't have to kill them to know how old they are!

Gary