The Fin whale, which grows up to nearly 88 feet long, weighing as much as 270,000 pounds, is the second largest whale. Here, a wild Fin whale is seen in the Pacific Ocean some 6 miles off the coast of Long Beach on January 19, 2012 in California. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

Growing up to 85 feet long, the majestic fin whale is the second largest living animal on Earth. Though they are large in size, they are not large in numbers. Fin whales are endangered – yet they're still hunted by Icelandic whalers.

But not this year. Iceland's largest whaling company, Hvalur, has announced it will not hunt fin whales this summer, blaming the decision on difficulties encountered in their main export market of Japan. According to the Iceland Monitor, the company's CEO Kristján Loftsson says Japan's .

Fin whales are year-round, but less commonly in tropical waters, according to the Sea Shepherd Society; it has been difficult to accurately track their population numbers.

Gísli Víkingsson, a whale specialist at the Marine Research Institute, told the Iceland Monitor that while the IUCN lists fin whales as threatened globally, there should be an , where the whales are much more abundant.

"Their list is governed by the situation of the fin whale population in the southern hemisphere which is in very bad shape. It was a very big population before the time of whaling. However, the population of fin whale in the central North Atlantic is around 20,000 which is the same number as before whaling started," he said.

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The whalingquota set by the Icelandic government is 154 fin whales per year. That's less than one percent of the estimated population.

Still, the recent news is music to the ears of wildlife conservationists worldwide.

"They’ve been killing an increasing amount of fin whales and ," Clare Perry of the Oceans Campaign for the Environmental Investigation Agency in London told National Geographic.

Iceland and Norway are the only countries that do not follow the set in 1986 by the International Whaling Commission, the Guardian reports.

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