Product Code Database
Whaling is the hunting of for their products such as Whale meat and blubber, which can be turned into Whale oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16th century, it had become the principal industry in the Basque coastal regions of Spain and France. The whaling industry spread throughout the world and became very profitable in terms of trade and resources. Some regions of the world's oceans, along the animals' migration routes, had a particularly dense whale population and became targets for large concentrations of whaling ships, and the industry continued to grow well into the 20th century. The depletion of some whale species to near extinction led to the banning of whaling in many countries by 1969 and to an international cessation of whaling as an industry in the late 1980s. Archaeological evidence suggests the earliest known forms of whaling date to at least 3000 BC, practiced by the Inuit and other peoples in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. Coastal communities around the world have long histories of hunter-gatherer use of , by dolphin drive hunting and by harvesting . Widespread commercial whaling emerged with organized fleets of in the 17th century; competitive national whaling industries in the 18th and 19th centuries; and the introduction of and explosive harpoons along with the concept of whale harvesting in the first half of the 20th century. By the late 1930s, more than 50,000 whales were killed annually. In 1982, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) decided that there should be a pause on commercial whaling on all whale species from 1986 onwards because of the extreme depletion of most of the whale stocks.
Contemporary whaling for whale meat is subject to intense debate. Iceland, Japan, Norway, North American indigenous peoples and the Danish dependencies of the Faroe Islands and Greenland continue to hunt in the 21st century. The IWC ban on commercial whaling has been very successful, with only Iceland, Japan and Norway still engaging in and supporting commercial hunting. They also support having the IWC moratorium lifted on certain whale stocks for hunting. Anti-whaling countries and environmental activists oppose lifting the ban. Under the terms of the IWC moratorium, aboriginal whaling is allowed to continue on a subsistence basis. Over the past few decades, whale watching has become a significant industry in many parts of the world; in some countries it has replaced whaling, but in a few others the two business models exist in an uneasy tension. The live capture of cetaceans for display in aquaria (e.g., Captive orcas) continues.
Early whaling affected the development of widely disparate cultures on different continents.Matera, Anthony. "Whale quotas: A market-based solution to the whaling controversy" , Georgetown International Environmental Law Review. Fall 2000. The Basques were the first to catch whales commercially and dominated the trade for five centuries, spreading to the far corners of the North Atlantic and even reaching the South Atlantic. The development of modern whaling techniques was spurred in the 19th century by the increase in demand for whale oil, sometimes known as "train oil", and in the 20th century by a demand for margarine and later whale meat.
Recent scientific surveys estimate a population of 103,000 minkes in the northeast Atlantic. With respect to the populations of Antarctic minke whales, as of January 2010, the IWC states that it is "unable to provide reliable estimates at the present time" and that a "major review is underway by the Scientific Committee."
Whale oil is used little today, and modern whaling is primarily done for food: for pets, fur farms, sled dogs and humans, and for making carvings of tusks, teeth and vertebrae. Both meat and blubber (muktuk) are eaten from narwhals, belugas and bowheads. From commercially hunted minkes, meat is eaten by humans or animals, and blubber is rendered down mostly to cheap industrial products such as animal feed or, in Iceland, as a fuel supplement for whaling ships.
International cooperation on whaling regulation began in 1931 and culminated in the signing of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) in 1946. Its aim is to:
provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry. The Convention. Iwcoffice.org. Retrieved on 2011-10-11.
The IWC voted on July 23, 1982, to establish a moratorium on commercial whaling of great whales beginning in the 1985–86 season. Since 1992, the IWC's Scientific Committee has requested that it be allowed to give quota proposals for some whale stocks, but this has so far been refused by the Plenary Committee.
At the 2010 meeting in Morocco, representatives of the 88 member states discussed whether to lift the 24-year ban on commercial whaling. Japan, Norway and Iceland urged the organisation to lift the ban. A coalition of anti-whaling nations offered a compromise plan that would allow these countries to continue whaling but with smaller catches and under close supervision. Their plan would also completely ban whaling in the Southern Ocean. More than 200 scientists and experts have opposed the compromise proposal for lifting the ban and have also opposed allowing whaling in the Southern Ocean, which was declared a whale sanctuary in 1994. Opponents of the compromise plan want to see an end to all commercial whaling but are willing to allow subsistence-level catches by indigenous peoples.
The IWC database is supplemented by Faroese catches of pilot whales, Greenland's and Canada's catches of narwhals (data 1954–2014), belugas from multiple sources shown in the Beluga whale article, Indonesia's catches of sperm whales, and bycatch in Korea.
| +Whales caught, by country and species, 2010–2014 |
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Most of the whale species in the table are not considered endangered by the IUCN ("least concern" or "data deficient"). Only the sei whale is classified as "endangered", and the fin whale is classified as "vulnerable" by the IUCN.
It was revealed in 1994 that the Soviet Union had been systematically undercounting its catch. For example, from 1948 to 1973, the Soviet Union caught 48,477 humpback whales rather than the 2,710 it officially reported to the IWC. On the basis of this new information, the IWC stated that it would have to rewrite its catch figures for the last 40 years. According to Ray Gambell, then-Secretary of the IWC, the organization had raised its suspicions with the former Soviet Union, but it did not take further action because it could not interfere with national sovereignty.
Whales play an important role in the carbon cycle in life and death. Living whales cycle carbon and nitrogen throughout the water column via whale feces where it can contribute to primary productivity at the surface. In death, their carcasses can become part of a whale fall and sink to the bottom, bringing their carbon with them to help form a temporary ecosystem at the ocean floor. Despite rebounding whale numbers after the international ban on whaling, climate change and rising carbon levels continue to hinder the amount of carbon sequestered by whales.
Harvested meat is sold through shops and supermarkets in northern communities where whale meat is a component of the traditional diet. Hunters in Hudson Bay rarely eat beluga meat. They give a little to dogs and leave the rest for wild animals. Other areas may dry the meat for later consumption by humans. An average of one or two vertebrae and one or two teeth per beluga or narwhal are carved and sold. One estimate of the annual gross value received from Beluga hunts in Hudson Bay in 2013 was for 190 belugas, or per beluga, and for 81 narwhals, or per narwhal. However the net income, after subtracting costs in time and equipment, was a loss of per person for belugas and per person for narwhals. Hunters receive subsidies, but they continue as a tradition rather than for the money, and the economic analysis noted that whale watching may be an alternate revenue source. Of the gross income, was for beluga skin and meat, to replace beef, pork and chickens which would otherwise be bought, was received for carved vertebrae and teeth. was for narwhal skin and meat, was received for tusks, and carved vertebrae and teeth of males, and was received for carved vertebrae and teeth of female narwhals.
The Whale and Dolphin Conservation says: "Canada has pursued a policy of marine mammal management which appears to be more to do with political expediency rather than conservation."
Canada left the IWC in 1982, and the only IWC-regulated species currently harvested by the Canadian Inuit is the bowhead whale. As of 2004, the limit on bowhead whale hunting allows for the hunt of one whale every two years from the Hudson Bay-Foxe Basin population, and one whale every 13 years from the Baffin Bay-Davis Strait population.
Greenlandic Inuit whalers catch around 175 large whales per year, mostly minke whales, as well as 360 narwhals, 200 belugas, 190 pilot whales and 2,300 porpoises. The government of Greenland sets limits for narwhals and belugas. There are no limits on pilot whales and porpoises.
The IWC treats the west and east coasts of Greenland as two separate population areas and sets separate quotas for each coast. The far more densely populated west coast accounts for over 90% of the catch. The average per year from 2012 to 2016 was around 150 minke and 17 fin whales and humpback whales taken from west coast waters and around 10 minke from east coast waters. In April 2009 Greenland landed its first bowhead whale in nearly 40 years. It landed three bowheads each year in 2009 and 2010, one each in 2011 and 2015.
In 2021 the Sermersooq municipal council banned whaling in Nuup Kangerlua, one of the largest fjords in inhabited areas of Greenland. The council did not want hunting to kill the humpback whales seen by the local tourism industry. Before local humpback hunting resumed in 2010 there had been nine humpbacks in the fjord during summer. When hunting resumed some were killed and others left. Sermersooq has not banned whaling elsewhere in the municipality, which is the world's largest municipality, at 200,000 square miles on both coasts.
German whaling ships in the mid to late 19th century would generally not be staffed with experienced sailors but rather with members of more wealthy farming communities, going for short trips to Scandinavia during the end of spring and beginning of summer, when their labor was not required on the fields. This kind of whaling was ineffective. Many journeys would not lead to any whales caught, instead seal- and polar bear skins were brought back to shore. Communities often paid more for equipping the vessels in the first place than making money with the goods brought back to shore. Today, local historians believe that German whaling in the late 19th century was more a rite of passage for the sons of wealthy farmers from northern German islands than an action undertaken for true commercial reason. German whaling was abandoned in 1872.
Prior to the First World War, the newly established German Empire attempted to re-establish large scale German whaling. This was undertaken with ships either going from Germany to Iceland or from the newly established German colonies to African waters. These attempts never were commercially successful and quickly given up. Only in the 1930s could Germany—with mainly Norwegian personnel—re-establish a large and successful whaling industry. More than 15,000 whales were caught between 1930 and 1939. With the beginning of the Second World War, German whaling was abandoned completely. In the early 1950s, Germany maintained one whaling vessel for testing purpose as it considered re-establishing a German whaling fleet, but abandoned these plans in 1956. The last remaining German whalers worked for Dutch vessels in the 1950s and 1960s.
Iceland did not object to the 1986 IWC moratorium. Between 1986 and 1989 around 60 animals per year were taken under a scientific permit. However, under strong pressure from anti-whaling countries, who viewed scientific whaling as a circumvention of the moratorium, Iceland ceased whaling in 1989. Following the IWC's 1991 refusal to accept its Scientific Committee's recommendation to allow sustainable commercial whaling, Iceland left the IWC in 1992.
Iceland rejoined the IWC in 2002 with a reservation to the moratorium. Iceland presented a feasibility study to the 2003 IWC meeting for catches in 2003 and 2004. The primary aim of the study was to deepen the understanding of fish–whale interactions. Amid disagreement within the IWC Scientific Committee about the value of the research and its relevance to IWC objectives, no decision on the proposal was reached. However, under the terms of the convention the Icelandic government issued permits for a scientific catch. In 2003 Iceland resumed scientific whaling which continued in 2004 and 2005.
Iceland resumed commercial whaling in 2006. Its annual quota was 30 minke whales (out of an estimated 174,000 animals in the central and north-eastern North Atlantic) and nine fin whales (out of an estimated 30,000 animals in the central and north-eastern North Atlantic). For the 2012 commercial whaling season, starting in April and lasting six months, the quota was set to 216 minke whales, of which 52 were caught. Iceland did not hunt any whales in 2019, and it is reported that demand for whale meat decreased in that year.
In 1973, the United Nations's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) sent a whaling ship and a Norwegian whaler to modernize their hunt. This effort lasted three years and was not successful. According to the FAO report, the Lamalerans "have evolved a method of whaling which suits their natural resources, cultural tenets and style." Lamalerans say they returned the ship because they immediately caught five sperm whales, too many to butcher and eat without refrigeration. Since these communities only hunt whales for noncommercial purposes, it is categorized as 'aboriginal subsistence hunters' by the IWC. The Lamalerans hunt for several species of whales but catching sperm whales are preferable, while other whales, such as baleen whales, are considered taboo to hunt. They caught five sperm whales in 1973; they averaged about 40 per year from the 1960s through the mid 1990s, 13 total from 2002 to 2006, 39 in 2007, an average of 20 per year 2008 through 2014, and caught 3 in 2015.
Traditional Lamaleran whaling used wooden fishing boats built by a group of local craftsmen clan called ata molã, and the fishermen will mourn the "death" of their ships for two months. These days, the Lamalerans use a motor engine to power their boats; however, their tradition dictates that once a whale has been caught, fishermen will have to row their boats and the whale back to the shore. The traditional practices made whaling a dangerous hunt. In one case, a boat was pulled approximately 120 km away towards Timor (see Nantucket sleighride), while in another case, the hunted whale capsized the boat and forced the fishermen to swim for 12 hours back to the shore.
The stated purpose of the research program is to establish the size and dynamics of whale populations. The Japanese government wishes to resume whaling in a sustainable manner under the oversight of the IWC, both for whale products (meat, etc.) and to help preserve fishing resources by culling whales. Anti-whaling organizations claim that the research program is a front for commercial whaling, that the sample size is needlessly large and that equivalent information can be obtained by non-lethal means, for example by studying samples of whale tissue (such as skin) or feces. Whaling on trial: Vindication!. Greenpeace.org (2010-12-23). Retrieved on 2011-10-11. The Japanese government sponsored Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), which conducts the research, disagrees, stating that the information obtainable from tissue and/or feces samples is insufficient and that the sample size is necessary in order to be representative. Japan's scientific whaling program is controversial in anti-whaling countries. Countries opposed to whaling have passed non-binding resolutions in the IWC urging Japan to stop the program. Japan claims that whale stocks for some species are sufficiently large to sustain commercial hunting and blame filibustering by the anti-whaling side for the continuation of scientific whaling. Deputy whaling commissioner, Joji Morishita, told BBC News:
The reason for the moratorium on was scientific uncertainty about the number of whales. ... It was a moratorium for the sake of collecting data and that is why we started scientific whaling. We were asked to collect more data.This collusive relationship between the whaling industry and the Japanese government is sometimes criticized by pro-whaling activists who support local, small-scale coastal whaling such as the Taiji dolphin drive hunt.
In September 2018, Japan chaired the 67th IWC meeting in Brazil and attempted to pass a motion to lift the moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan did not receive enough votes and the IWC rejected the motion. Subsequently, on 26 December 2018, Japan announced that it would withdraw its membership from the IWC, because in its opinion, the IWC had failed its duty to promote sustainable hunting as the culture within the IWC moved towards an anti-whaling, pro-conservation agenda. Japanese officials also announced they will resume commercial hunting within its territorial waters and its 200-mile exclusive economic zones starting in July 2019, but it will cease whaling activities in the Antarctic Ocean, the northwest Pacific Ocean, and the Australian Whale Sanctuary. "IWC withdrawal: Japan to resume commercial whaling in 2019". Euan McKirdy, Emiko Jozuka, Junko Ogura. CNN News. 26 December 2018. "Japan to Resume Commercial Whaling, Defying International Ban". The New York Times. 26 December 2018.
In 2019, the Australian Marine Conservation Society and International Fund for Animal Welfare commissioned legal opinion, which concluded that Japan's commercial whaling program within its territorial waters breaks international convention and law and that Japan makes itself vulnerable to potential international legal action.
The Soviet Union's intensive illegal whaling program from 1948 to 1973 was controlled and managed by the central government. In Soviet society, whaling was perceived to be a glamorous and well-paid job. Whalers were esteemed as well-traveled adventurers, and their return to land was often celebrated elaborately such as with fanfare and parades. In regard to economics, the Soviet Union transformed from a "rural economy into an industrial giant" by disregarding the sustainability of a resource to fill high production targets. The government had controlled all industries, including fisheries, and whaling was not constrained by the need for sustainability through profits. Managers' and workers' production was incentivized with salary bonuses of 25%-60% and various other benefits, awards, and privileges. Many industries, whaling included, became a "manic numbers game".
Currently, the indigenous Chukchi people in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Far East are permitted under IWC regulation to take up to 140 from the North-East Pacific population each year. About 40 are caught in the Sea of Okhotsk each year. There are no recent data on catches in the Arctic Ocean or Bering Sea, where about 60 belugas per year were caught in the early 1980s.
The meat is sold commercially and 82% of Bequia residents consume it at least occasionally, though it is subject to high levels of methyl mercury.
Residents of the town of Barrouallie hunt and sell meat from short-finned pilot whales and several dolphin species, including killer whales and false killer whales. 92% of people from the town, and high fractions from nearby towns, eat this meat at least occasionally. Sellers call this meat "black fish" without regard to species. Its levels of methyl mercury mean that consumption needs to be less than a serving every three weeks. However the mercury danger is not well known in the country. As of 2020 the government is considering banning the hunt of killer whales.
There is still a loophole in South Korean laws that allows fishermen to keep any bycatch including whales. All whales caught accidentally must be reported and is then inspected for harpoon injuries. The meat from these whales can then be sold, which can be very lucrative for fishermen who can earn up to 200 million won ($150,000 US) per minke whale. This loophole has led to high numbers of whale, dolphin and other cetacean deaths. In 2023, the number was 866 recorded deaths, which is a sizable reduction from a high of 2,014 cases in 2019 and 1,066 in 2022, but is still worryingly high. Fishermen who abuse this loophole have been arrested and prosecuted, but activists have spoken out against this loophole, and demanded more protections for whales and better accounting for those caught and killed.
Due to their concern, and the higher than the global average numbers of bycatch cetacean deaths,15 members of the Korean Parliament put forward a bill in 2023 to ban the consumption of whale meat and to have a more rigorous inspection of all whale carcasses by Coast Guards. Activists also want to have a database created that would help authorities spot more easily those who are using the loophole to illegally hunt whales.
The Bill raises hopes for better protections for whales but it will have to face a culture with deep historical, geographical and cultural ties to whale meat, and opposition from the commercial fishing industry.
Subsistence hunting of the bowhead whale is carried out by nine different indigenous Alaskan communities, and is managed by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission which reports to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The hunt takes around 50 a year from a population of about 10,500 in Alaskan waters. Conservationists fear this hunt is not sustainable, though the IWC Scientific Committee, the same group that provided the above population estimate, projects a population growth of 3.2% per year. Bowhead whales weigh approximately 5–10 times as much as . The hunt also took an average of one or two gray whales each year until 1996. The quota was reduced to zero in that year due to sustainability concerns. A future review may result in the gray whale hunt being resumed.
The Makah people tribe in Washington state also reinstated whaling in 1999, despite protests from animal rights groups. They are currently seeking to resume whaling of the gray whale, Makah Whale Hunt . Nwr.noaa.gov. Retrieved on 2011-10-11. a right recognized in the Treaty of Neah Bay, within limits (Article 4 of the Treaty).
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