The Davis Strait - DCE - Nationalt Center for Miljø og Energi

2003/04-2007/08 the catch averaged 16.0/year (sd=11.8, range:2-34). This is
a minimum estimate of total removals, because in some years landed catches
for some of these settlements are not reported. Furthermore, struck-and-lost
is not included in the reporting (DFO unpubl. data in lit. 2009).
Polar bear
Total annual quotas for the harvest from the DS population is 46 for Nunavut,
2 for Greenland, 6 for Nunatsiavut (Newfoundland and Labrador).
There is no quota in Nunavik (Quebec). In January of 2006, Greenland established
a quota system. An annual quota of 2 bears was established for the
Davis Strait population (Obbard et al. 2010).
5.2.4 Baleen whales
Minke whales, fin whales, bowhead whales and humpback whales are hunted
in West Greenland and annual quotas are set every 5 years by the IWC
(The International Whaling Commission) (Tab. 5.2.1). The Greenland government
then divides the quota among the different municipalities.
Fin whales have been regularly hunted in Greenland since the 1920s and
minke whales since the 1940s. From 1995 to 2009 the quota for fin whales
remained stable at 19 whales per year but this quota was seldom used and
with the introduction of an annual quota of 9 humpback whales for West
Greenland in the years 2010-2012, the fin whale quota was correspondingly
reduced to 10 whales per year. The quota for minke whales for West Greenland
is 178 whales per year, with the possibility of transferring up to 15 animals
from one year to the next (IWC 2010).
Apart from a period between 1987 and 2009, humpback whales have been
hunted in Greenland for centuries (Fabricius 1780). Six out of the nine
humpback whales from the quota of 2010 and 2011 can be taken within, or
close to, the assessment area (APNN 2011b). Whale watching focusing on
humpback whales is an activity that has grown considerably in Greenland
during the last years and is practised both by commercial companies and by
locals from private boats (Boye et al. 2010). To avoid conflicts of interest between
whaling and whale watching, whalers and tour operators in the Municipality
of Sermersooq have agreed to avoid overlap of their activities in
time and space (Bergstrom 2010). To minimise disturbance to humpback
whales, a voluntary code of conduct for whale watching has been suggested
by the Greenland Tourism and Business Council (Boye et al. 2010, Boye et al.
2011)
Bowhead whales have been hunted since the time the Thule Inuit settled in
Greenland about 1,000 years ago (Jensen et al. 2008a). European and North
American whalers decimated the population in the 17 th -19 th centuries and by
the start of the 20 th century the species had become rare in Greenland. In
1927 the species was protected. The population has now recovered to the extent
that a quota of two animals per year for the period 2008-2012 has been
approved by the IWC. The first bowhead whales were caught in 2009. Bowhead
whales are caught in Disko Bay, north of the assessment area.
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