Commercial Trade of Wildlife - The International Whaling Commission

The campaign to save endangered whales has perhaps made greater progress than any other international effort to protect endangered species. In 1946, long before the creation of CITES, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was established to regulate whaling. The IWC, a loosely governed consortium, included fifty-two nations in 2004. The primary function of the IWC is to conserve whale stocks through measures such as: the complete protection of endangered whale species; designation of whale sanctuaries; limiting of the numbers and sizes of whales that can be taken; designation of open and closed seasons for whaling; and prohibition of takes of whale calves as well as females accompanied by calves. Unfortunately, the IWC is powerless to enforce its resolutions, and depends largely on international pressure and the enforcement policies of individual nations. Member countries that are unwilling to comply with restrictions imposed by any IWC agreement may refuse to participate or may simply quit the IWC.

In order to protect dwindling whale populations, the IWC began by setting quotas on whale kills. As populations continued to decline, however, the IWC declared a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, with certain exceptions. In 1994 the IWC banned whaling within the 11 million square miles around Antarctica, an area called the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. The sanctuary, which must be reauthorized at ten-year intervals, is intended to create a safe harbor for the 90 percent of world whales that feed there. There is also an IWC whale sanctuary in the Indian Ocean, originally established in 1979. At the IWC conference in 2002, Mexico, which boasts a large whale watching industry, declared it would establish a 1.15 million square mile whale sanctuary along Mexican coastal waters in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Despite international pressure to obey the moratorium on commercial whaling, Japan, Norway, Russia, and Iceland, among other nations, continue to whale. Additionally, although the IWC has condemned whaling for research purposes, it nonetheless tolerates a self-allocated annual kill for research. Japan, which, along with Norway, continues to campaign for the reinstatement of commercial whaling, has killed numerous whales under the auspices of research. In 2002 Japan allocated itself a research quota of 700 whales, including 590 minke whales, 10 sperm whales, 50 Bryde's whales, and 50 sei whales. Selling the whale meat, Japan claims, is required by a commission rule prohibiting the waste of research byproducts. The IWC condemned this as a thinly veiled ruse to continue commercial whaling, and called on Japan to use non-lethal research methodologies. Moreover, some environmentalist groups charge that this "research" trade provides a cover for illegal trade in the meat of protected species. In 1997, Earthtrust, a conservation group based in Hawaii, announced the results of several years of tests on whale meat obtained from Japanese markets and restaurants. DNA tests revealed that a large proportion were from endangered species such as humpback and blue whales, rather than from "research" specimens. The Earthtrust project involved conservation biologists Steve Palumbi of Harvard University and C. Scott Baker of the University of Auckland. The illegal trade in whale meat—which brings in as much as $300 per pound—is hypothesized to involve large organized crime groups in Japan.

At the IWC meeting in 2003, Japan continued to argue that whales deplete fisheries, a claim not substantiated by patterns of fish catch in recent years. Norway has also objected to the IWC moratorium on commercial whaling and set itself a quota of 711 whales in 2003. Much of the Norwegian catch ends up being sold in Japan. In addition, Japanese and Taiwanese companies have been caught smuggling large amounts of whale meat.

Subsistence Whaling

In response to the IWC's moratorium on whaling, several groups—including the Makah of Washington State, the Inuits of Alaska (formerly known as Eskimos), and the Chukchi of Siberia—requested a special exemption to hunt bowhead whales, arguing that whales were necessary for their subsistence, in addition to being a significant part of their culture and tradition. These hunts have occurred for over 8,000 years. Critics of the exemptions argued that these groups were no longer dependent on whaling for food. Furthermore, critics charged that traditional whaling in these cultures had involved spears—resulting in a much smaller kill than is possible today with harpoon guns. The IWC granted permission for aboriginal subsistence whaling in 1997 but also established quotas to limit the annual take. In particular, only 280 whales could be taken in a five-year period, with no more than 67 takes in a single year. Since then, subsistence hunting permits have also been issued to Greenlanders (for fin whales and minke whales) as well as inhabitants of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (for humpback whales).

In 2002 the IWC rejected the United States' request that Alaskan Inuits be allowed to continue their whale hunts. The U.S. had requested fifty-five bowhead whales over a period of five years. This was the first time aboriginal hunting quotas were denied. The decision was attributed in the U.S. press to Japanese retaliation—the U.S. had led efforts against allowing Japanese coastal whaling towns to hunt a total of fifty minke whales.