The government of Iceland has announced an end to commercial whaling by 2024.

“There are few justifications to authorize whale hunting beyond 2024,” when current quotas expire, Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture Svandís Svavarsdóttir said in an op-ed in Friday’s Morgunblaðið newspaper.

The minister wrote it was “undisputed” that whale hunting had not had much economic significance to Iceland in recent years, with no big whale caught in the last three years, except for one minke whale in 2021.

“Japan has been the largest buyer of [Icelandic] whale meat, but its consumption is declining year by year. Why should Iceland take the risk of continuing fishing that has not yielded economic benefits, in order to sell a product that is in low demand?” she asked.

Iceland resumed commercial whaling in October 2006 in a move “furiously disputed by many countries angry at what they regarded as Iceland’s attempt to bypass international regulations,” according to Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), a non-profit organization.

Iceland, Norway, and Japan are the only countries that authorize the commercial whale hunt, despite criticism from animal rights activists and environmentalists, concerns about toxins in the meat, and a shrinking market.

Iceland’s annual quotas for 2019 to 2023 allow for the hunt of 209 fin whales – the planet’s second-largest species after the blue whale and considered endangered – and 217 minke whales, one of the smallest species.

Whaling has been paused in Iceland since 2019 as coronavirus restrictions, competition from subsidized Japanese whaling, and increasing domestic whale watching tourism have hampered the industry.

Only about 2% of Icelanders eat whale meat on a regular basis. While Japan is the largest whale meat export market, tourists to the island nation eat about 70% of all whale meat from Icelandic whaling.

Paradoxically, as the demand for whale meat has declined, Iceland has become the largest whale watching destination in Europe. Around 20% of all tourists who visit Iceland go whale watching, which is to say somewhere between 300,000 and 400,00 tourists yearly.