Time for Iceland to stop whaling?

 *a fin whale

With Pierce Brosnan's recent public condemnation of Iceland's whaling and the push to get the Obama administration to impose sanctions on Iceland (unlikely to happen;) I've had yet again to consider again why we even bother with whaling here in Iceland.

Lets try to break this issue down to a matter of cost/benefit for Iceland, and try to avoid the inevitable nationalistic anger about anyone telling us what to do with our resources. Hvalur, a single company is responsible for our whaling industry; while hunting endangered fin whales and the slightly more abundant minke whales. Icelander's do not include whale meat as a significant part of their diet, its a unique item that most of us will eat (its delicious) and yet we can certainly live without it.

This rather small industry on a nationwide scale is certainly very profitable for Hvalur, but what does this represent as matter of harm done to the image of Iceland globally, not just in business that we may lose or never get because of the passionate force behind those against whaling. What does this do to our tourism, how many people per year more would visit Iceland if not for this policy of whaling, and so forth.

The unknown costs to Iceland financially is very hard to quantify, yet we know there is a cost and I think too often those supporting whaling in Iceland do so more because they do not like outsiders telling us what to do and of course the fact that often people do not have their facts straight on how much we do actually hunt. 

As usual, I'm only giving you my perspective as a relative newcomer to my homeland. Do I have my facts wrong, am I missing something important as to why we should continue whaling and defying international agreements. I'd love to hear from anyone who has contrary ideas or can help me understand why we continue whaling, the only possible logical explanation I've heard is a dubious report suggesting we have to hunt whales to protect our fish stocks.

For selfish sake, lets end with a great little video on Blue Whales with everyone's favorite naturalist, Richard Attenborough.