Whale Watching Worldwide

Introduction
Cultures across the globe have interacted with
whales and dolphins for centuries. Cetaceans have
been both feared and revered alongside being
hunted and observed. Across the world, cetaceans
(whales, dolphins and porpoises) are rarely referred
to without passion.
Throughout much of the last century, cetaceans
were largely seen as a resource to be harvested for
the many products that could be extracted from
these largest of mammals. This large‐scale
harvesting of marine mammals came close to an
end in the 1980s as the globe witnessed the
collapse of whale populations. This led the
International Whaling Commission to declare a
moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986,
designed to protect whales from the threat of
extinction.
Since this moratorium, the predominant interaction
between cetaceans and humans has changed
fundamentally for the majority of the globe. And so
has the economics of this relationship. Once these
animals were used as an economic commodity of a
gargantuan scale ‐ a phenomenon that reached its
peak on the factory ships of the 1960s. Now there
is strong support across much of the globe for
seeing whales as an intrinsically valuable global
public asset that should be protected for their own
benefit and those of the marine ecology.
This shift towards conservation need not require
economic sacrifice. As this report, and earlier
research, shows conserving whales for conservation
purposes has also proven to be sound economic
policy, albeit unintentionally.
This Whale Watching Worldwide report
demonstrates that there is massive economic
activity occurring precisely because of the
conservation of whales. Furthermore, this activity
occurs across the entire globe ‐ from our most built‐
up metropolises to the most remote corners of the
world, from the largest oceans to the longest rivers.
This is indicative of a wider movement. For too
long, our consideration of the environment
significantly under valued the benefits we derive
from it, including life itself. This is to our own
detriment and for that of the globe. This report
forms a part of a movement to re‐balance those
scales. A movement to show the world’s people –
and policy makers in particular – that it is not only a
moral and biophysical imperative to ensure a
healthy and balanced environment, but it is also an
economic one. Conservation and environmental
protection equate more closely with the protection
of our economies than has previously been
acknowledged.
The economics of a niche tourism industry such as
whale watching can be read purely as a good news
story of continued strong growth over a decade
when tourism globally was thrown some significant
challenges such as war, terrorism and pandemics.
Although significant, that would underplay the real
value of the story told within these pages: this is a
story of strong and effective conservation policy
delivering economic and development
opportunities in all corners of the globe whilst the
population of wild cetaceans recovers.
Economists at Large are pleased to present Whale
Watching Worldwide, an assessment of the
economic contribution of whale watching across the
globe in 2008, a special report from the
International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
Whale Watching Worldwide tracks the growth of
this industry since the early 1990s, just five years
after the IWC voted to put in place a moratorium on
commercial whaling.
This report is a ten‐year update of a seminal report
released by IFAW a decade ago that mapped the
global whale watching industry in 1998 9 . That
report, by Erich Hoyt, showed a burgeoning industry
reaching maturity in some regions, but in its infancy
in most parts of the globe. Still, at that time, only
9 Hoyt, E. 2001. Whale Watching 2001: Worldwide
tourism numbers, expenditures, and expanding
socioeconomic benefits. International Fund for Animal
Welfare, Yarmouth Port, MA, USA, pp. i–vi; 1–158.
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