Oceans of noise - Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

6.3 ASCOBANS and ACCOBAMS
Two regional agreements that are specific to cetaceans have been concluded under the auspices of
the Convention for Migratory Species: the 1992 Agreement for Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and
North Seas (ASCOBANS), and the 1996 Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans of the
Black and Mediterranean Seas and Contiguous waters (ACCOBAMS).
The ‘purpose’ of ASCOBANS is to “maintain a favourable conservation status for small
cetaceans” and each party is meant to “apply within the limits of its jurisdiction and in accordance
with international obligations the conservation, research and management measures presented in
the Annex.”
In the Annex Point 1.d commits the Parties to work towards “…the prevention of other significant
disturbance, especially of an acoustic nature”, and Point 4 in states that
“Without prejudice to the provisions of paragraph 2 above, the Parties shall endeavour to
establish (a) the prohibition under national law of the intentional taking and killing of
small cetaceans where such regulations are not already in force.”
However, “take” is not defined in the Agreement text.
ACCOBAMS came into force in June 2001. It is the more ambitious of the two agreements and
recognises “disturbance” in one preambular paragraph and LOSC in another. Here again, Parties
are required to “take co-ordinated measures to achieve and maintain a favourable conservation
status for cetaceans” and Article II 4 requires that in implementing the prescribed conservation
measures the Parties shall apply the “precautionary principle”.
The “Conservation research and management measures” for ACCOBAMS are again spelled out
in an annex (Annex 2), where Point 1c requires that Parties shall
“Require impact assessments to be carried out in order to provide a basis for either
allowing or prohibiting the continuation and the future development of activities that may
affect cetaceans or their habitat……including…..offshore exploration and exploitation,
nautical sports, tourism and cetacean watching, as well as establishing the conditions
under which such activities may be conducted.”
In the original text of the Act “take” is defined (Article 13) as “to harass, hunt, capture or kill, or
attempt to harass, hunt, capture or kill any marine mammals.”
More latterly, the ASCOBANS parties have recognised again the threat of disturbance and noise
by, for example, passing a resolution on this issue (Resolution No.4) at the last meeting of Parties
in 2000 (ASCOBANS, 2002).
Similarly, at the first meeting of ACCOBAMS Parties, a resolution providing a detailed code of
conduct for whale-watching was passed (This is provided here in Box 1, as an illustration of
whale watching guidelines ).
The consequences in practice of the “soft law” provided by such resolutions can only be gauged
over time. The guidelines for whale watching agreed by the ACCOBAMS parties are unusual in
that they are provided as an exemplary regime for states in the agreement area to follow. The
guidelines, which are still under development, are reproduced in full here as Annex A2.
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