Minke whale In August 2003, Iceland announced it would start research catches to estimate whether the stocks around the island could sustain hunting. Three years later, in 2006, Iceland resumed commercial whaling. A 2007 analysis of DNA fingerprinting of whale meat estimated South Korean fishermen caught 827 minke between 1999 and 2003, approximately twice the officially reported number. This raised concerns that some whales were being caught deliberately. Due to their relative abundance, minke whales are often the focus of whale-watching cruises setting sail from, for instance, the Isle of Mull in Scotland, County Cork in Ireland and Húsavík in Iceland, and
Bucca (mythological creature) in Cornish tin mines, granting wishes in exchange for food (see knockers). Bucca (mythological creature) Bucca is a male sea-spirit in Cornish folklore - a merman- that inhabited mines and coastal communities as a hobgoblin during storms. The mythological creature is a type of water spirit likely related to the Púca from Irish and Welsh folklore and the female mari-morgans - a type of mermaid from Welsh and Breton mythology. Rev W. S. Lach-Szyrma, one 19th-century writer on Cornish antiquities, suggested the Bucca had originally been an ancient pagan deity of the sea such as Irish Nechtan or British Nodens,