Environmental protection group Greenpeace has sailed its protest ship "Esperanza" into an Icelandic whaling port, launching this year's tour of the island country to campaign against killing whales.
Amsterdam-based Greenpeace has been challenging plans by Iceland to kill whales as part of a scientific study since the country announced its intentions last August, prompting protests from Britain and more than 20 other nations.
The environmental group said its campaigners would meet the residents, whalers and fisherman of the port of Isafjordur to discuss the future of whaling in Iceland, where many still see it as a way of life and crucial job provider.
"Choose the future, not whaling," is the message Greenpeace wants to get across and has been seeking to convince Iceland's government that it could earn much more from promoting whales as a tourist attraction than by hunting them.
"Iceland is on the border between old and new, future and past," said Greenpeace International ocean campaigner Frode Pleym. "By choosing the only truly sustainable future path, Iceland can set an example for other whaling nations to follow and secure a future for the people of this country".
On June 1, Iceland announced it had reduced the number of whales it would kill. It now plans to kill 25 minke whales this year, many fewer than the hundreds it had planned to kill.
Icelandic whalers killed 36 minke whales in August and September last year out of a planned 100. Norway will hunt 670 whales in 2004, while Japan caught 440 for scientific purposes in its hunting season which ended in March.
Whaling nations say stocks of minke whales are plentiful, unlike endangered species such as the giant blue whale, and do not need protection under a moratorium on all hunts by the International Whaling Commission since 1986.
The Esperanza's next stop is Husavik, a whale watching centre. After that the ship will head for Reykjavik.