REYKJAVIK, Iceland: One of Iceland's two remaining whaling ships set out this week to hunt the giant mammals after a two-year hiatus, local media and campaigners reported on Saturday.

Iceland is one of only three countries that still openly permit whaling, alongside Norway and Japan -- despite international opprobrium from the public and animal welfare organisations.

A protester chained himself to the mast of the vessel before it left the port of Reykjavik on Friday. He climbing down in the evening and was escorted away by police, RUV media said.

"It is so disheartening to see Iceland's whaling boat leave port to begin another season of whale slaughter despite overwhelming evidence that there is no humane way to kill a whale," Joanna Swabe of the Humane World for Animals NGO said after the second vessel headed out to sea.

"These ocean giants will very likely endure an agonising death for meat that virtually no one in Iceland wants to eat," she told AFP.

Iceland cancelled its whale hunt in 2024 and 2025, partly because economic woes had cut demand and the industry was not deemed sufficiently profitable.

The International Whaling Commission banned the commercial killing of whales in 1986 amid alarm at the declining stock of the marine mammals.

Iceland and Norway are the only two countries still openly practising commercial whaling in defiance of the moratorium.

Japan hunts the ocean giants for what it claims is "scientific" purposes, even if most of the meat ends up on the market for consumption.

Iceland's Marine and Freshwater Research Institute has recommended a reduction in the number of whales harpooned this season, which runs from mid-June to mid-September.

The 2026 annual number of fin whales killed should not exceed 150 animals, a 28-percent drop on the recommended annual catch for the period 2018–2025, it said.

The fin whale is the second largest animal on Earth after the blue whale.

The Institute set an annual quota of 168 animals for the minke whale hunt this year, a 23-percent drop.

The government is due this autumn to table a bill on banning whaling altogether.

Whale Hunt

Iceland resumes whale hunt amid protest