whale-for-sale

WHALE FOR SALE THE GLOBAL TRADE IN DEAD WHALESNorway700Norway: Great whales killed after the moratorium60050040030020010001987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012Scientific permit Under objection Illegal catchMore than 10,500 minke whales were killed during this periodEarly whaling: Early commercial whaling targetted bottlenose whales. The period 1890-1910 sawmassive takes of these whales (up to 3,000 annually) which resulted in a dramatic crash in numbers.The focus switched to minke whaling in the late 1920s, as minke whale products were more profitableand this period also marked a shift towards whaling for meat rather than oil as the primary purpose.Between 1957-1970, there was also an active pilot whale hunt, for example, in 1966, 369 pilot whalesand 162 orcas were killed. The orca hunt ended in 1981.Modern whaling: Norway was one of the few governments to take out an ‘objection’ to themoratorium. When the ban on commercial whaling came into effect in 1986, Norway initiallyundertook a small-scale scientific hunt of minke whales then, in 1993, it announced that it wouldresume commercial whaling under this ‘objection’. Minke whaling in Norway is conducted byfishermen, the vast majority of whom resume fishing activities outside the whaling season. Prior tothe whaling ban, Norway killed approximately 2,000 minke whales per year and exported over halfof the products from these hunts to Japan. Quotas have risen in recent years; however, the actualkill tally by the end of the whaling season inevitably falls far short of the possible quota. In 2013, forexample, Norway self-allocated a quota of 1,286 whales yet actually killed 590 minke whales (125more than the previous year). The 2013 hunt yielded 790 tons of meat at an overall value of 27 millionNOK. The meat fetched a slightly higher price per kilo than 2012, prompting whalers to boast that theseason had been ‘the best in years’. 1“A lot more whales have been caught and sold than in previous years. We must interpretthis as a positive development and interest has been growing among some buyers who wantto buy and sell this more widely. We‘ll see what happens next year, but if we get the sametrend as we have had this year, it could mean a lot for both the hunters and buyers.”Per Rolandsen of the Norwegian Rafisklaget (sales association) 2Whale meat – domestic market: Creating new products to save a dying industryAs is the case in Japan, Norwegian whale meat is a highly-subsidised product, with subsidies equal toalmost half of the gross value of all whale meat landings made through the Rafisklaget, the Norwegian{ 28 }