Icelandic mass murdering killing spree has been shut down for 2016.
Kristján Loftsson the world's most notorious cetacean serial killer will not kill any endangered Fin whales this summer. Not because he does not want to. He is a man driven by a ruthless greed to slaughter as many whales as he can. He loves the money but my observations of this sadistic individual over the last three decades is that he also enjoys the killing.
No other individual since Ari Onassis has been so personally involved in the murder of whales.
In 1986 Sea Shepherd destroyed half his ruthless fleet of illegal killer boats. The two ships that Sea Shepherd activists sent to the bottom of the harbor have never been repaired, their rusting hulks still moored by the pier where they were raised three decades ago. It took Loftsson 18 years to recover from the damage Sea Shepherd inflicted on his operation.
However he was able to build a new market in Japan providing them with whale meat from the Fin whale, an endangered species that even the Japanese have been unable to kill because of a decade of interventions by Sea Shepherd in the Southern Ocean.
Last summer the Sea Shepherd ship SAM SIMON delayed the whale meat transport vessel WINTER BAY from departing Trömso and the ship was only able to leave under escort by the Norwegian Coast Guard.
The blocking of the WINTER BAY by the SAM SIMON was followed by another obstacle for this Icelandic whale killer with the visit by Sea Shepherd Chair Pamela Anderson to Russia to meet with President Putin and her request that Russia ban trans-shipments of whale meat through Russian waters across the Arctic Ocean to Japan.
Of course Loftsson, who hates Sea Shepherd with a passion will not acknowledge the Sea Shepherd obstacles, so he is citing another obstacle as his reason for shutting down whaling operations and that is the bureaucratic red tape of the Japanese market that requires the whale meat to be accompanied by a full chemical analysis certificate.
According to Loftsson, the Japanese are clinging to 40-year old analysis methods used nowhere else in the world. Icelandic whale-meat products are accompanied by a full chemical analysis certificate that Loftsson says the Japanese find unacceptable.
What is strange is that Loftsson has not complained about the chemical analysis certificate before and suddenly it becomes the reason for shutting down operations for the summer of 2016.
According to Loftsson, the Japanese don't trust the Icelandic chemical analysis. They must have trusted it before but for reasons unknown Loftsson says they no longer trust it now.
“If Japan does not adopt modern testing methods such as used in Iceland, Hvalur will no longer be able to hunt whales for the Japanese market,” he says.
It's kind of amusing that an Icelander would claim that the Japanese are not as modern in chemical analysis of whale meat as the Japanese but that's Loftsson's story and apparently he's sticking to it.
If Loftsson sees this as the only obstacle the simple solution would be to have the whale meat undergo Japanese chemical analysis in Iceland or Japan. As the seller he should not have any issue with the buyer requesting their own certification.
When we purchase a ship we undertake our own survey. The buyers usually offers a survey but it would be unwise to proceed with a purchase using only the survey of the seller.
Loftsson employs 155 workers in his whaling operation and happily they will soon be un-employed, at least in the whaling industry.
Sea Shepherd cannot confirm that Pamela Anderson's intervention was pivotal in this decision nor can we confirm that the costs of the delays caused by Sea Shepherd last summer were a factor but we tend to think that the Sea Shepherd obstacles make more sense than some bureaucratic discrepancies over certification.
So Loftsson's excuse is very suspect. There are factors here that he is has chosen to not reveal.
If Japan wants the whale meat they would of course negotiate a way to get around the red tape. And if Iceland wants to sell the whale meat they would also be willing to negotiate a solution. Those are obstacles they can control.
They cannot control Sea Shepherd obstacles.
Last summer, Hvalur hunted 155 finback whales, which are classified as an endangered species by the IUCN. 150 people were employed by the company to hunt whales and to process the meat. Sea Shepherd has have no sympathy for their loss of employment.
Whatever the reason for the decision to not slaughter whales this summer, it is happily received with great joy by people everywhere who love and value the lives of whales.
Captain Paul Watson - Founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Established (1977)
www.seashepherdglobal.org
