Frozen with the blubber and sent to Japan. Japan took almost every tonne from 2008 to 2022. [4] In August 2026 Hvalur stopped selling there. [20]
Weight · products · the meat
Where thewhale goes.
Killed in 202693
fin whales. Two were lost at sea. [1]
No one publishes the weight. Iceland has shipped no whale meat abroad since December 2022. [4]
01 / The weight
About forty
tonnes a whale.
The official register counts the whales. It doesn't weigh them. [1]
MAST, the food safety authority, records each whale's length and sex. We have 61 of these records. The average whale was 18.5 metres long. The shortest was 16.5 metres, the longest 22.3. Two in three were females. [2]
Scientists use a formula to get a whale's weight from its length. By that formula the average whale weighed about 40 tonnes. The largest, a 22.3-metre female, weighed about 74 tonnes. [3]
For 30 whales we have no length. The first week's reports leave it out. We don't have the last 24 reports yet. We counted those whales at the average. Whales put on fat over the summer, and the formula doesn't count fat. So the real total is probably higher. We put it between 3,300 and 4,000 tonnes.
| Whales | Count | How weighed | Tonnes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Length recorded | 61 | by its length | 2,422 |
| 22–29 June, no length recorded | 6 | average | ≈ 240 |
| 30 Aug – 20 Sep, no reports yet | 24 | average | ≈ 950 |
| Brought ashore | 91 | ≈ 3,600 | |
| Lost at sea | 2 | average | ≈ 80 |
We used the formula from a 1976 study by Christina Lockyer. Other formulas give about the same total.
02 / Year by year
Catch, cargo
and cold store.
Almost all of it went to Japan. Nothing has been shipped since December 2022.
From 2010 to 2018 Iceland shipped 11,695 tonnes. That is about 14 tonnes for each whale killed. In 2022 the whole catch went on one ship. That came to about 17 tonnes a whale. [4]
| Year | Fin whales killed | Exported, tonnes | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 7 | – | Commercial fin whaling starts again. |
| 2007 | 0 | – | |
| 2008 | 0 | 83 | The first cargo goes to Japan. [4] |
| 2009 | 125 | – | Nothing is shipped. Vísir writes that sales are "in turmoil". [5] |
| 2010 | 148 | 765 | Greenpeace protests in Rotterdam. Seven containers of whale meat are taken off a ship bound for Japan. [6] |
| 2011 | 0 | 942 | |
| 2012 | 0 | 1,041 | |
| 2013 | 134 | 401 | In Hamburg six containers are taken off a ship. About 130 tonnes go back to Iceland. No shipping line will carry the meat. [7] 14 tonnes go to Norway. It is the only cargo that did not go to Japan. [4] |
| 2014 | 137 | 2,325 | The ship Alma takes about 2,000 tonnes round Africa to Japan. [8] |
| 2015 | 155 | 1,816 | The ship Winter Bay sails to Japan through the Russian Arctic. [9] Hvalur holds unsold products worth ISK 3.6 billion, three times as much as in 2012. [10] |
| 2016 | 0 | 1,529 | No hunt. Loftsson blames Japan's tests on the meat. He says they use methods over 40 years old. Japan is his main market. The Winter Bay sails again. [11] |
| 2017 | 0 | 1,407 | The Winter Bay sails a third time. Loftsson says almost all the stock has now been shipped. [12] |
| 2018 | 146 | 1,469 | About 1,500 tonnes leave for Japan in October. [13] |
| 2019–21 | 0 | – | No hunt. In March 2022 the station says it has no meat left. [14] |
| 2022 | 148 | 2,576 | The ship Silver Copenhagen leaves for Japan on 21 December. The cargo is so big that Vísir thinks it also holds older stock. [15] Keeping the meat frozen costs Hvalur ISK 202 million that year. [16] |
| 2023 | 24 | – | The 2022 cargo reaches Japan in February. That month the whale meat in Japan's cold stores jumps from 2,171 to 4,609 tonnes. The count covers all whale meat in Japan. [17] In June the hunt is stopped over animal welfare. It starts again in September. This year's catch has never been exported. [4] |
| 2024–25 | 0 | – | No hunt. Kyodo Senpaku, the Japanese company that bought the meat, says about 2,000 tonnes of it is still unsold in 2024. [18] Hvalur's sales of whale products fall from ISK 3.4 billion to ISK 19 million, then ISK 22 million. [19] |
| 2026 | 93 | – | In June Japan still has 3,496 tonnes of whale meat in cold storage. [17] Figures up to July show no exports from Iceland. [4] In August Hvalur stops selling to Japan. [20] In September Kyodo Senpaku says some of the 2023 cargo is still in its freezers. [21] |
The export figures may include some minke whale. Meat usually ships a year or two after the hunt.
03 / The products
What is
made of it.
The station can cut up to 75 tonnes of meat and blubber a day. It can make up to 10 tonnes of meal and oil a day. [22]
Until the 1980s Iceland sold thousands of tonnes of whale oil and meal abroad. Since 2006 it has exported only frozen whale products. [23]
Hvalur now plans to dry the meat into an iron supplement called Reyðarjárn. It may only be sold in the Faroes, Norway and Japan. [20] Loftsson says dried fin-whale meat has about 300 mg of iron per kilo. [24] Hvalur promised iron supplements once before, in 2018. None went on sale. [25]
Made by boiling the blubber. The 2022 season gave 476 tonnes. Trade rules stop Hvalur selling it. Hvalur burns it as fuel on its ships. [26] The station's steam boiler burns it too. [22] In 2013 Loftsson said his ships ran on 20% whale oil and 80% diesel. [27]
Bones, guts and scraps, cooked and dried. The 2022 season gave 375 tonnes. It was not good enough for pig feed. [26] Hvalur asked parliament to allow whale products in animal feed in 2009. In 2024 the law banned them. In June 2026 Hvalur asked again, and the ban stayed. [5] [28] The water left from cooking goes down the drain into the fjord. Hvalur says it has no permit to use it. [22]
One MAST report, from 30 August 2026, notes 600 litres of blood taken "for haemoglobin production". It doesn't say what the haemoglobin is for. [2]
In 2018 Hvalur planned to make gelatine from the bones. [25] In 2023 the government said the idea was still being studied. [26]
In 2013 Icelandic fin whale was sold in Japan as dog treats. The seller pulled them when campaigners found out. [29] In 2014 a beer made with whale meal was banned, because the meal was not approved as food. The same brewery later made a beer with smoked fin-whale testicles. [30]
Sources
- Our 2026 season log. 93 fin whales, as counted by the Directorate of Fisheries. The count includes two whales lost at sea.
- MAST reports on each whale landed in 2026, numbers 26001 to 26068. Report 26068, from 30 August, notes the blood. We got the reports from Hvalavinir. Two members of our team sit on its board.
- Lockyer (1976), "Body weights of some species of large whales". The formula, and fin whales weighed in Iceland in 1953.
- Statistics Iceland, exports by product: yearly tables to 2023 and a monthly table to July 2026. Fin and minke whale are counted together.
- Vísir, 8 June 2009, and Hvalur's letter to parliament, 3 June 2009.
- Grapevine, 5 April 2010; BNNVARA, 2 April 2010.
- RÚV, 10 July 2013; RÚV, 23 July 2013.
- Vísir, 23 April 2014; AFP, 9 May 2014.
- mbl.is, 2 August 2015; Fortune, 1 September 2015.
- Vísir, 14 May 2023, from an audit of Hvalur's accounts: unsold stock worth ISK 1.1 billion in 2012 and ISK 3.6 billion in 2015. Also Iceland Review, 2016.
- mbl.is, 25 February 2016; EIA, 2016.
- Viðskiptablaðið, 19 August 2017.
- mbl.is, 17 October 2018.
- Heimildin, 22 March 2022.
- Vísir, 6 February 2023.
- Heimildin, 6 June 2023, on Hvalur's accounts to September 2022.
- Japan's agriculture ministry, cold-store survey: 2023 tables and June 2026 table. It counts all whale meat in store, not only Iceland's.
- Wedge, 4 June 2024, quoting Kyodo Senpaku's president.
- Fiskifréttir, 14 August 2024; mbl.is, 30 July 2025; Viðskiptablaðið, 5 June 2026. Hvalur's year ends on 30 September.
- Vísir, 17 August 2026; mbl.is, 17 August 2026.
- Kyodo News, September 2026, in Hokkoku Shimbun and Kumamoto Nichinichi. No tonnage given.
- West Iceland health inspectorate, letter to parliament, 1 June 2023, with Hvalur's operating licence. The licence gives the daily capacity and says the boiler burns whale oil: "knúinn með hvallýsi".
- Statistics Iceland, whaling and whale exports, 1863–2023.
- Morgunblaðið, 17 August 2026, interview with Loftsson. His figures; no one has tested them.
- Whale and Dolphin Conservation, "Whaling in Iceland".
- Government of Iceland report on the economics of whaling, August 2023.
- Marine Science Today, 10 February 2013, reporting Loftsson's words to the Sunday Times. We have not seen the original.
- Feed act no. 22/1994, article 7b, added in 2024. Hvalur asked parliament to drop it on 1 June 2026. It stayed.
- EIA, 29 May 2013.
- RÚV, October 2014; Vísir, 2015.