The end of August marks the close of Iceland’s 2007 commercial whaling season, but it hasn’t been a jackpot season for their commercial whaling companies. Of the 29 minke and 2 fin whales in the 2007 hunting quota, fewer than 10 minke whales and no fin whales have or will be harvested, said a spokesperson from Iceland’s Ministry of Fisheries on Tuesday.

It appears that Iceland’s most recent commercial whaling experiment has been an almighty disaster. Not only has Iceland endured the wrath of the environmental community for killing cute, gentle whales, they haven’t even been able to enjoy the full benefits of the actions that brought them all that bad press. Iceland caused a huge controversy in 2006 when it re-started commercial whaling operations, not least for contravening the International Whaling Commission ban on commercial whaling that came into force in 1986.

Some Icelandic fisherman claim that whales eat all their fish and that whales are responsible for the decline in total fish catches from 2 million tons in 2000 to 1.7 million tons in 2005. They argue that by resuming commercial whaling pressure will be reduced on declining fish stocks. They clearly didn’t see the scientific papers showing that fin and minke whales eat mostly krill and that miscellaneous fish species (of the kind that humans eat) make up only 5% of their diet.

Icelanders too, are not universally happy about the resumption of whaling. Most are acutely aware that the $1 billion earned from fishery exports account for 50% of their foreign currency earnings, and that there is a real need to diversify their economy. Of all the other economic sectors, tourism is the fastest growing (7% per year), earning over $300 million in export revenues. A Gallup poll suggested that 48 per cent of Icelanders believed that resuming whaling would have 'a rather negative or very negative impact on Iceland's tourism industry'. Greenpeace can also attest to this as they have a list of over 110,000 people who pledged that they would visit Iceland only if the country stopped commercial whaling. This represents $115 million in potential income that quite heavily outweighs the potential $3-4 million in value generated by whaling. At the end of the day, it is Iceland’s world-class whale-watching tourism ventures that take the financial hit.

Delving further into the absurdity is the acknowledgment by Iceland's largest whaling firm Hvalur (which killed seven fin whales in 2006) that they are having trouble finding markets for 100 tons of the refrigerated meat of this endangered species. Keeping the stuff on ice is costing them a lot of money as does all the testing for man-made pesticides that whales tend to accumulate in their blubber. Although the modern Icelandic word for jackpot ‘havlreki’ also means ‘beached whale’, Hvalur's managing director Kristjan Loftsson may eventually be forced to concede that the whole experiment was just an ill-conceived business idea.

But Greenpeace shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet. It might seem like the Icelandic whaling industry has taken a beating, but the immediate future for fin and minke whales still looks bleak. The same Icelandic Ministry of Fisheries spokesman told me that September is the month that an Icelandic marine research laboratory plans to harvest it’s ‘entire scientific research quota’ of 39 whales. The cover up of whaling as science is so blatant that it could very well taint Iceland’s strong reputation for good fisheries science. And that industry is actually worth something: US$1 billion.

Brian Gratwicke is a regular contributor to davidmixner.com.  More about Brian can be found at www.briangratwicke.com