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TROUBLED WATERS - Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

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38<br />

A REVIEW OF THE WELFARE IMPLICATIONS OF MODERN WHALING ACTIVITIES<br />

6 Commercial <strong>and</strong><br />

Aboriginal subsistence whaling<br />

Philippa Brakes, Marine Consultant, c/o WDCS (<strong>Whale</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Dolphin</strong> <strong>Conservation</strong> <strong>Society</strong>),<br />

Chippenham, UK.<br />

Sue Fisher, US Director, WDCS (<strong>Whale</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Dolphin</strong> <strong>Conservation</strong> <strong>Society</strong>), P.O. Box 820064,<br />

Portl<strong>and</strong> 97282 – 1064, Oregon, US.<br />

Commercial whaling<br />

Despite the implementation of a worldwide ban on commercial whaling by the International<br />

Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1986, four types of ongoing modern whale killing activity are<br />

commercial in nature in that the products of the hunt are sold for profit:<br />

• Norway lodged an objection 1 to the IWC’s moratorium decision <strong>and</strong> recommenced commercial<br />

whaling in 1992. Norway currently takes between 550 <strong>and</strong> 640 minke whales a year 2 , the products<br />

of which are sold domestically <strong>and</strong>, in recent years, have been exported to Japan, Icel<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> the<br />

Faroe Isl<strong>and</strong>s.<br />

• Japan <strong>and</strong>, since August 2003, Icel<strong>and</strong> conduct whaling under a ‘special permit’ provision in Article<br />

VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), which allows<br />

contracting governments to issue permits to their nationals authorizing the killing of whales for<br />

purposes of scientific research. The whaling operation may process <strong>and</strong> dispose of the edible tissue<br />

from the whales killed without restriction by the IWC. Japan undertakes two scientific whaling<br />

operations annually: JARPA 3 currently targets approximately 440 minke whales annually in the<br />

Antarctic <strong>and</strong> JARPN 4 targets 150 minke, 50 sei, 50 Bryde’s <strong>and</strong> 10 sperm whales in the eastern<br />

North Pacific. The meat <strong>and</strong> blubber from the hunts are sold commercially to Japan’s extensive, but<br />

declining, domestic market. Icel<strong>and</strong> plans to take 38 minke whales in 2003, <strong>and</strong> up to 250 minke,<br />

fin <strong>and</strong> sei whales annually in subsequent years5, <strong>and</strong> has expressed its intent to export whale<br />

products to Japan. The legitimacy <strong>and</strong> ethics of this ‘scientific research’ are the subject of another<br />

chapter of this review (chapter 13).<br />

• Japan, Norway 6 , <strong>and</strong> Icel<strong>and</strong> also permit the consumption of whales that have died as a result of<br />

entanglement in nets (‘bycatch’). Japan has recently changed its laws to permit the commercial sale<br />

of bycaught whales. The killing of bycaught whales has become known at the IWC as ‘net whaling’.<br />

• The products of some whales, which are taken under IWC rules permitting Aboriginal Subsistence<br />

Whaling, are sold commercially on the domestic market <strong>and</strong> two countries currently conducting<br />

ASW have recently expressed interest in exporting whale products 7 . Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling<br />

will be discussed at the end of this chapter.<br />

The welfare implications of each whaling technique will be considered in this chapter. Table 1 shows<br />

the number <strong>and</strong> species of whales killed over the last five years by Japan <strong>and</strong> Norway, the average <strong>and</strong><br />

maximum time they took to die (time to death, TTD), the instantaneous death rate (IDR) <strong>and</strong> the<br />

proportion of animals shot but lost (the ‘struck <strong>and</strong> lost’ rate, SLR).

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