SAN FRANCISCO, June 11 – Iceland’s government issued a licence to the North Atlantic nation’s last whaling company, Hvalur hf, to brutally slay 128 fin whales.
It’s long overdue for the notorious whaler, Kristján Loftsson, to cease and desist massacring Mother Earth’s great whales, the oxygen replenishers.
Did you know that the oceans provide planetary life with three out of every four breaths of oxygen? Combustion heat (fossil fuels, wood pellets, palm oil) is adding the equivalent of 15.95 Hiroshimas every second of the year (31,536,000 A-bomb detonations) into the oceans, and it’s accelerating. Consequently, 40% of the oxygen-producing phytoplankton and cyanobacteria (Prochlorococcus) are missing from heat-disrupted nutrient deficiencies.
Whales to the Rescue
Whales transport deep sea nitrogen and iron to the surface and release it in their flocculent fecal plumes and urine. These colossal farmers of the sea fertilise and regrow the plush mats of plant and cyanobacteria that absorb rising CO2 and plenish atmospheric oxygen.
Globally, oxygen levels are steadily declining due to burning fossil fuels, wood pellets and palm oil, Scripps Oxygen Programme.
In point of fact, every glorious whale cultivates the ocean. After eighty years or so they naturally expire and fall to the ocean floor. Trillions of bottom dwelling creatures digest and store as much as 63 metric tons, per whale, of carbon within the seafloor. The whales are paramount in our defence against man-made global heating.
Why does Iceland’s wealthiest man, Kristján Loftsson, crave the destruction of whales that intend him no harm?
For almost seven decades, Loftsson has decimated great whale populations. Hvalur hf is a money-losing enterprise that he subsidises with profits from large shareholdings in banks, food processing, IT and other companies. Loftsson is a vile executioner; a loathsome biodiversity diminisher.
There is NO demand for whale meat in Iceland. Therefore, Loftsson sells fin whale meat to Japan, another country that has no market either for whale meat. So, the Japanese government forces it into the national School Lunch Programme. By the by, that meat is contaminated with persistent bio-accumulated organic pollutants: PCBs, pesticides (glyphosate), DDT, chlordane and heavy metals. Shame on Nippon for intentionally poisoning its children!
In spite of the fin whales being protected under international conservation law and listed as vulnerable on the ICUN Red List of Threatened Species, the unprincipled Icelandic government continues to authorise godforsaken whale death warrants.
Until Iceland’s government refuses to issue Hvalur hf whaling permits, each of us can protect the whales. #BoycottIceland – retribution for their psychopathic destruction of defenceless pregnant whales.
Only barbarians, scourges, tyrants and decadent governments would condone the excruciating pain fraught deaths of our peaceful brethren and sistren, the whales. Unforgivable.
Agitate. Disrupt. Defend.
Reese Halter is a bees/trees/seas defender.
Unearthly Wails is a special edition, a collection of poetry
illustrated by renowned Ojibwa artist Terry McCue.
Email: HalterBooks@gmail.com to order
