— One of Iceland's richest men has hit back against claims his whaling company illegally killed a protected blue whale.
"We have never caught a blue whale in our waters since they were protected," Kristján Loftsson, managing director of Hvalur hf, told CNN. "We see them in the ocean. When you approach a blue whale, it's so distinct that you leave it alone."
Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd claimed Wednesday that Loftsson's company had killed and butchered a blue whale in Hvalfjordur, Iceland. Volunteers monitoring the whaling site photographed orange-clad crews examining the massive carcass.
The largest animals in existence, blue whales are a protected species and have not been deliberately captured since 1978, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

There'll surely be bigger ones yet to be discovered.