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Every year Norway announces that it will again increase its self appointed quota of whales that it will slaughter, in defiance of IWC regulations and world opinion.
A former whaler, John Burton, from the UK, spent three seasons in the Antarctic 50 years ago. He often worked as look-out on a catcher vessel, and says he was involved in killing hundreds of whales.
But he describes his earnings from those days as 'blood money', and that he does not accept that anybody needs kill whales.
Mr Burton, from north-east England, was speaking at a Greenpeace news conference at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting.
He is not a member of an activist group himself, but says he was stirred to voice his misgivings by the organisation's campaign against whaling.
He went to sea at the age of 16, and worked as a mess boy, which also involved helping on deck and in the catcher's crow's-nest.
Mr Burton described how a hunted whale would dive, only to find when it resurfaced that the whalers were still waiting.
Turning the sea deep orange as it defecated with fear, he said, the whale would swim furiously to escape, but was usually harpooned despite its efforts. Sometimes a whale would tow the 400-tonne catcher vessel behind it in a bid to rid itself of the harpoon.
When harpoons were extracted from dead whales, they sometimes had to be returned to the blacksmith's shop on the factory ship. Some would need straightening and renovation, because they had been bent and twisted like paper-clips.
The IWC is under pressure from two members, Japan and Norway, to end its 15-year-old moratorium on commercial whaling.
Mr Burton told BBC News Online he was absolutely opposed to any resumption of commercial whaling for two reasons - the depletion of the whales' numbers, and the cruelty of the hunt.
'I eat meat and I like it,' he said. 'But farm animals are something you can replenish, and they do have some measure of reasonable life.'
'Whales are a finite resource - you can't farm them. And the numbers killed in the whaling years are staggering.'
'There are two elements to the cruelty. For the whale, the worse part was probably the hunt. The chase could last for hours - the longest I remember was four to five hours.'
'Whales have very sensitive hearing, and the ones we were chasing would probably be able to hear our engine and propeller from three or four miles away. Sometimes they'd hide in the pack ice. But we'd always be waiting for them.'
'The kill was terribly cruel. We don't let cows and pigs be chased round a slaughterhouse for several hours by a man with a crossbow riding a powerful motorbike.'
'The whales could take as long as eight hours to die, then eventually they'd be towed to the factory ship. The sight on deck there was a real Hell's kitchen - blood everywhere, three or four inches (6-8 centimetres) deep.'
'I remember once seeing a 92-foot (28-metre) blue whale being cut up. Another time, tossed aside in the scuppers, lay a 5-ft (1.5-m) foetus, lying in its mother's blood.'
Mr Burton disputes Japan's claim that whaling is part of its culture.
'I don't accept that anyone needs to whale,' he said. 'I can't understand the Norwegians, though I have many friends there.'
'I was part of north-east England's whaling culture. Now it's gone - and nobody misses it.'
A UK scientist says hunted whales can live for more than an hour after being harpooned.
He found that the harpoons themselves and the rifles used to finish off wounded whales were often ineffective.
Only Norway and Japan now hunt whales, abusing the 'scientific whaling' provisions in the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on commercial whaling.
Both use grenade-tipped harpoons fired from a cannon, and wounded whales are usually killed with rifles or further harpoons, and (by Japan until 1997) with electric lances.
The longest time for an animal to die was about 90 minutes for Norway, and (according to one author) 130 minutes for Japan.
But he says: 'It would seem that the existing whale-killing methods and equipment are not capable of significant further improvement. I can't currently visualise an acceptably humane way of killing whales.'
Norway has filed an objection with the IWC over the commercial whaling ban, and continues to whale in defiance of the ban. IWC rules allow members to officially 'object' to the convention's provisions, and to then use those objections to ignore the intent of the majority.
Norway claims to set its whaling quota on IWC-approved formulas designed to prevent whale populations from being over-exploited. But the country has been criticized by experts for lack of proper management ...coming under particular criticism for the large numbers of breeding females taken. There has been continuing international opposition to their deception on 'scientific' whaling and in juggling the IWC formula in order to slaughter vastly more whales than the IWC allows.
'Norway blatantly disregards the IWC's international ban on commercial whaling, then reworks population management figures to validate their whale takes,' says Karen Steuer, IFAW Director of Commercial Exploitation and Trade of Wild Animals. 'What sort of international responsibility does that represent?'
Norway also recently announced its intention to begin trading in whale products in spite of a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) ban. Japan is, potentially, the biggest and most lucrative market for Norwegian whale meat and blubber.
The decision to flout the international convention and international public opinion becomes difficult to explain when Norwegian authorities say that the earnings from whaling are miniscule.
Instead Norway says whaling is a point of principle. It is claimed to be the country's 'sovereign right' to harvest all natural resources, regardless of whether these resources are found in international waters.
'It's neither the money nor the tradition,' said Johan Williams, director general at Norway's fisheries ministry. 'The main reason why we continue is a basic 'principle' for marine resources'
In March, the Norwegian Fisheries Directorate announced that samples tested from five whales had blubber with such high dioxin and dioxin-like PCBs
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