TROUBLED WATERS - Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

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A REVIEW OF THE WELFARE IMPLICATIONS OF MODERN WHALING ACTIVITIES
9 Norway reports that these animals are all lost after they are dead.
10 Data recorded for only 481 whales.
11 Annual number of whales reported as bycaught in trap nets. Data from Japan’s Annual Progress Reports,
submitted to the IWC.
12 Article VI, paragraph 28, Appendix A.
13 In addition, the Commission is developing a data collection form as part of its negotiations of the Revised
Management Scheme, which will manage commercial whaling in the future if the Moratorium is ever lifted.
14 At time of writing, Iceland has not completed its first season and it is not known if it will report any data
collected to the IWC.
15 Relaxation of the lower jaw or no flipper movement or sinking without active movement (Anon 1980).
16 Effective for all whales, except minke, killed for commercial purposes from the beginning of the 1980/81
pelagic and 1981 coastal seasons. Effective for minke whales from the 1982/83 pelagic and 1983 coastal
seasons. (Paragraph 6, ICRW)
17 Permit No. 14-SUIKAN-1299, dated April 4 2003.
18 The IWC is inconsistent in addressing this issue for Aboriginal hunts; for example only setting a limit on
the number of whales ‘taken’ in Greenland’s fin whale and East Greenland minke whale hunts, but capping
the number of whales ‘struck’ in its west Greenland minke hunt.
19 Article VI, Information Required, paragraphs 25 and 27.
20 Thirty-nine of the Scientific Committee’s national delegates from many different nations had concluded
that, not only was Iceland’s research proposal poorly contrived and unlikely to yield relevant results, but that
it was ‘deficient in almost every respect’.
21 IWC Resolution 2003-3.
22 First passed in 1990 and amended in 2001.
23 According to data provided to the IWC by Japan, before 2001 the average number of whales bycaught in
Japanese trap nets was 20, however, this leapt to 79 in 2001, following the implementation of the new
legislation.
24 The Hokkaido Shimbun (a Japanese newspaper) reported that, of 123 whales caught in nets between July
2001 and July 2002, 119 were killed. This represents an increase in the first year since the law was changed
to permit fishermen to kill and sell the whales caught in their nets.
25 For example, the UK stated (and others concurred) to the IWC meeting in 2002 that “animals killed under
Japan’s new legislation which, under certain circumstances, authorises the deliberate killing of whales bycaught in
fishing operations, should be reported as infractions” (Chair’s Report of the 54th Annual Meeting. P 45).
26 Paragraph 13 of the schedule to the ICRW.
27 For example, in 1979, the Technical Working Group on Humane Killing recommended that governments
act to reduce waste and inhumane methods of killing. In 1985, the Commission adopted a resolution on
humane killing in Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling that “urges the prompt adoption of more efficient methods of
killing whales, that reduce cruelty and inhumanity, in areas where aboriginal and subsistence whaling is practised”
(Chair’s report of 37th Annual Meeting, appendix 3). These sentiments were reiterated in Resolution 1997-
1, which urged aboriginal subsistence whalers to “do everything possible to reduce still further any unavoidable
suffering caused to whales in such hunts”.
28 IWC Resolutions 1997-1 and 1999-1.