Norway’s Proud Whalers Give Up the Harpoon, but Only Grudgingly

When Norway agreed to protect whales in 1987, third-generation whale hunter Rangvald Dahl saw his kind as the next endangered species.

With a wrecked career, a debt-laden ship and few job prospects, Dahl shifted his sights from whales to whale watchers, turning his ship into a tourist cruiser.

“We had to do something,” said the 31-year-old blond skipper, an Arctic whale hunter since age 12. “If I couldn’t make a living on dead whales, I decided to make one on live whales.”

Whale hunting is a proud tradition in northern Norway, where winters are long and dark and the steep mountains seem to plummet into the sea. There is little room for coastal farming or any other way to make a living.

Temporary Ban

Norway was unmoved by save-the-whale campaigns. But threats, boycotts and international pressure forced the government to impose a temporary ban on commercial whaling last year.

Environmentalists say whales are on the verge of extinction because of over-hunting. The blubber is used for oil, and the meat is a delicacy in Japan.

Another problem is ocean pollution.

“We’re more worried about whales being poisoned by pollution than hunting,” said Eva Norderhaug of Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group.

Hunters like Dahl claim that the delicate Barents Sea ecology is tilting out of balance because minke whales, their main prey, eat too many fish. However, scientists say over-fishing threatens the sea’s fish stocks more than the whales do.

A whaler’s union filed a suit against the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries on July 4, seeking $23.5 million in compensation. It argues that there was no legal or scientific basis for the ban.

“There is great uncertainty about the total number of minke whales in the North Atlantic. Some researchers see no reason for a ban,” said Trygve Staff, the whalers’ lawyer.

The International Whaling Commission has estimated that there are 19,000 whales in the North Atlantic. Other estimates range up to 100,000.

‘Most to Lose’

“Whalers have asked for quotas,” said Dahl, who has harpooned 700 whales. “We had the most to lose if whales became extinct. But only certain kinds are in danger.”

“The whole argument on whaling was based on emotion. Environmentalists don’t know the first thing about whales,” said Ernst Rolf Dahl, 67, Rangvald’s father and business partner, who has 3,500 kills in his 53 years of hunting.

Norway’s grudging ban on commercial hunting is good only until the Whaling Commission completes an assessment of whale stocks next year. It is allowed to kill 20 whales this year for research purposes.

Conservationists say the roughly 500 scientific kills the commission approves for Japan, Iceland and Norway are really disguised commercial hunts.

Dahl sails his 85-foot ship, the Kromhout, from wind-swept Andenes on Duck Island, 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. He carries 30 camera-armed whale watchers, mostly Swedes, for seven-hour cruises.

The whale-watching idea was born of an uneasy alliance among the Dahls, the World Wildlife Fund and Sweden’s Center for the Study of Whales and Dolphins.

Books Trips

The Andenes Whale Center opened last summer with a $30,000 grant from the Wildlife Fund. It books trips, provides experts, shares profits with the Dahls and hopes to protect whales while employing whale hunters.

A bureaucratic squall nearly scuttled the idea.

Maritime officials at first blocked the tours because the Kromhout, which was up for auction for back taxes in February, was not a passenger ship. An 11th-hour state grant saved the ship, which was modified for passengers.

But the squabble left Norway’s other 52 whaling skippers wary. So far, none have followed Dahl into the tourist business.

Dahl said, “Its hard not to feel unfriendly sometimes” toward his partners at the center. “Whalers have been hated so much for so long . . . because of the misinformation spread by environmentalists.”

“We get along fine,” said Dio Simila, a 28-year-old Finnish marine biologist at the center. “The Dahls’ whale-hunting experience helps. They find whales on every trip.”

Brochures, clearly aimed at adventurous Americans, promise meetings with Moby Dick in the “Alaska of Europe.” The season is packed into a few hectic summer months. Winters 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle are too harsh for whale watching.

Finn, minke, sei, humpback, white, sperm and orca, or killer, whales can be spotted during tours, Simila said.

Idle Cannons

Powerful harpoon cannons stand idle on the fore and aft decks of the squat wooden Kromhout. The lethal guns, though unarmed, sometimes provoke the tourists, “but I set them straight,” Dahl said.

“Save the Whale” T-shirts are unwelcome aboard the Kromhout.

The whaling ban has nearly depopulated some villages in northern Norway, already a sparsely populated and economically hard-pressed region. The switch to other types of fishing is difficult and costly, and Norway already has too many fishing boats.

“It’s terrible to take away people’s living--their traditions and way of life. These are private individuals, not big business, that have been ruined,” Dahl said.

He brushed aside descriptions of whales as playful, intelligent creatures that communicate and sing: “Man was put on Earth to harvest its resources, including sea mammals.”