For many whaling crews the season effectively ended on July 1, when processing facilities announced that they would take no more whale meat. A spokesman for the environmental group Greenpeace, which carried out its most combative campaign last month against Norwegian whaling in five years, said the weak domestic market was a sign that the industry is obsolete. Norwegian whalers, however, used it as grounds to step up their demand to export meat to other whale-eating countries. A Greenpeace spokesman, Frode Preym, said his organization's complaint has nothing to do with the minke whale's numbers or the notion that whales are intelligent. We are making the rational argument that Norway's defiance of international agreements could tempt other nations to follow suit, Preym said.
Japan hunts whales for what it calls research purposes.
A variety of aboriginal groups have received dispensation to conduct small-scale traditional hunts. But only Norway has resumed commercial whaling. The Norwegian Coast Guard sent its own flotilla to enforce a security zone around the whalers. A Coast Guard patrol boat and a smaller Greenpeace vessel collided near the whaling vessel Villduen in June, sending an activist to the hospital with a broken arm, broken pelvis, broken fingers and internal injuries. On July 12, when a Greenpeace semi-inflatable craft carrying a member of British Parliament came between a harpooned whale and the whaling vessel Kato, three gunshots rang out.