Whaling...

Iceland has officially broken its 21 year old whaling ban, the question that remains is how andagered are the whales? Iceland's a argument for whaling is that because most whales in the Atlantic are living in the waters of Iceland, thus making limited whaling sustainable in their waters. Icelands whalers will exclusivly whale Mink whales and only 30 of those. Yet, is this sustainable? The Japanese just stepped up their whaling program and the whale population is greatly decimated as it is. The actuall impact of those increases in whaling can only be told with time, can we afford to take the risk of exterminating another species?
The whales represent a great portion of the under water food chain which has already suffered greatly under over fishing. The full impact of is still inknown but it is claer that the extermination of more species will have an impact on the environment. What will a dead ocean mean?
Today there are three nations that still continue to whale, Japan, Norway and the newest member of this group is Iceland. Todays technology makes it possible that a single whaling ship can bring mayham to the species it is fishing or hunting. The ban on whaling was created because most nations accepted that whales were being hunted to the verge of extinction. Why if the whales can be extinct would they ban it?
For some reason those nations had to think that the whale as a species is actually important to the environment otherwhise why would they have stopped it?