Having looked into this a little deeper, I find Icelander's post earlier rather disingenuous. He was implying that since baleen whales eat plankton, the depletion of fish stocks by humans was irrelevant.

In fact, the Icelandic government's main justification for whaling is conservation of fish stocks. Plankton includes eggs and larval stages of fish, and the baleen filters will catch not only these but smaller fish as well. "Fin whales feed mainly on small shrimp-like creatures called krill or euphausiids and schooling fish. They have been observed circling schools of fish at high speed, rolling the fish into compact balls then turning on their right side to engulf the fish...They can consume up to 2 tons .. of food a day."

Iceland has most to lose in this- if they come to be viewed as ecologically destructive, they will seriously damage a tourist industry worth many times the value of whale products, and an international consumer boycott could damage other industries as well.