Iceland allows whaling to resume – activists say that whales will still suffer agonising deaths despite new regulations and monitoring

I suspect part of this is due to how the whaling ban was implemented. The Minister of Food unilaterally implemented the ban just one day before the whaling season was due to start, and the single remaining company with a whaling permit will see that permit expire in December. So I wonder it this a compromise letting them have one last go of it since the company already had so many resources committed to the hunt. As far as cultural elements of the hunt go, my understanding is that the whale meat is almost entirely shipped overseas with only a small amount reserved for (generally) older Icelanders eating it on occasion, and tourists eating it because they think Icelanders do.

There is an excellent (and short) Icelandic podcast called The RÚV English Podcast, and they had an episode just after the ban was imposed with Valur Grettison, the former editor of the Reykjavik Grapevine talking about how it all went down.

Listened to a podcast about whaling recently. Was pretty interesting that for cultural reasons whaling has bipartisan support in Japan, yet the demand is abysmal (like 0.1% of their diet). So they don't even kill as many as is alloted by the government.