It's believed that in order to resume a hunt on whales that the present stock should be at the very lease (minimum in studies) 53% of the original stoch pre mid 18th century. It not even close to that.
The IWC (International Whaling Commision) believes that Iceland is on it's way to petion in the future to drop the ban on commerical whaling where at present the IWC bans even whaling for scientific studies claiming that the studies can be done in non-lethal methods for research.

see http://www.global-whale-alliance.org/iceland.htm

Barru