This is good news in that it looks as though Iceland will be crossed off the very short list of whaling countries but it isn’t particularly good news for whales as it seems to be driven by Japan being able to meet its whalemeat demand from its own whaling fleet.
Still, it will mean, I presume, that whale meat will disappear from Icelandic supermarkets.
From what I’m told it was mainly a tourist thing in Iceland, and even in Japan it is old people, tourists, and the occasional youtube shocktuber asshole who ate it. Now, granted, the supply of assholes just out to outrage people is in no danger of of drying up, but Japan has a diminishing amount of elderly people who remember the good old days[tm], and tourists are not so keen on sampling the forbidden flesh no more (and it’ll take a while for tourism to recover post-COVID in any case).
And, ICBW, the last I saw was that Japan’s whaling fleet was reliably taking over 20% beyond demand even in the before times. It is just plain Japanese stubborness and being unwilling to lose face by backing down to the international outrage that has kept them doing it. Whaling is probably on its last legs even in Japan, although we’re probably talking a couple of decades out due to how slowly Japan tends to move on social trends.