Icelanders accused of blue whale slaughter

AN ICELANDIC whaling company has been accused of killing an endangered blue whale in a “deplorable act”.

Genetic sampling has been conducted to establish the species of the whale, with experts unable to rule out the possibility it could be a rare blue/fin whale hybrid, which it is legal to hunt.

Kristjan Loftsson, the chief executive of Hvalur hf whaling company, told The Daily Telegraph he was “pretty confident” tests would confirm the animal was a hybrid species.

However, Dr Peter Richardson, head of ocean recovery at the Marine Conservation Society, told The Telegraph he believed the animal was a blue whale, after analysing photographs, and said: “This is a deplorable act.”

Dr Phillip Clapham, one of the world’s leading experts on large whales from the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Centre, said: “From the photos, it has all the characteristics of a blue whale… there is almost no possibility that an experienced observer would have misidentified it as anything else at sea.”

The whale caught by the Icelandic Hvalur hf whaling company. Ocean activists Sea Shepherd UK, who observed the animal close up, said that several experts had confirmed ‘without question’ it was a blue whale