Stop the 2026 Fin Whale Hunt

To: The Honourable Hanna Katrín Friðriksson, Minister of Industries Cc: Her Excellency Halla Tómasdóttir, President of Iceland

Subject: A request to refuse the 2026 fin whale hunting licence

Dear Minister Friðriksson,

I am writing as one of many people, who believe that the decisions a nation makes about its wildlife say something lasting about that nation. I am writing because the decision in front of you this summer is one of those decisions, and because what happens in Icelandic waters does not stay in Icelandic waters.

You have publicly stated that commercial whaling is not in the public interest of Iceland. Your government has committed to introducing legislation banning the practice this autumn. Iceland's Marine and Freshwater Research Institute has reduced its catch advice. Iceland's own Food and Veterinary Authority has documented, in detail, the suffering that current hunting methods inflict, with a median time to death of 11.5 minutes and individual cases lasting up to two hours. Iceland's Council on Animal Welfare has concluded that these methods are incompatible with the country's own animal welfare laws.

The economic case has likewise dissolved. The Japanese export market has effectively closed. Whale meat from the 2023 hunt remains in storage. Whale watching generates many times more for the Icelandic economy than whaling ever has. The polling shows the Icelandic public has moved on. The world has moved on.

What is left is a five-year licence held by a single company, and a decision that sits with you.

I respectfully ask you to refuse the 2026 hunting authorisation, and to begin the formal process of revoking the existing licence. Waiting until autumn means accepting that fin whales, an IUCN-Vulnerable species, will be killed in the interim for a practice your government has already decided to end. There is no version of that outcome that is consistent with the position you have taken in public.

To President Tómasdóttir, I ask that you continue to use the moral authority of your office to support an end to commercial whaling in Iceland, as conservation organisations and a growing share of the Icelandic public have called on you to do.

Iceland has, throughout its history, been a country that recognised the value of its marine ecosystems before others did. The 1915 ban on whaling around Icelandic waters, decades before the international moratorium, is part of that history. The decision in front of you is an opportunity to extend that legacy, not to interrupt it.

Please, end this now.

With respect,

[Your name] [Your city, country]