Whale Watching Worldwide

Foreword: IFAW and Whale Watching 1980 ‐ 2009
They say that the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent 1
Vassili Papastavrou
There is one group which should take the credit for the development of whale watching: it is the whales
themselves. Described by Roger Payne as nature’s self‐publicists, there is nothing more remarkable than seeing
a whale for the first time and it is no wonder that whale watching has now grown into a 2.1 billion dollar
industry.
A quick scan through campaigning publications such as The Whale Manual (Friends of the Earth, 1972) and Mind
in the Waters (Project Jonah edited by Joan McIntyre, 1974) shows that whale watching is notable by its
absence. Whale watching had already started in California some two decades earlier but perhaps the full
implications had not been realised. It was only after the adoption of the 1982 moratorium on commercial
whaling that the idea of whale watching began to take hold as a realistic financial alternative to whaling. In 1983
the Global Conference on the Non‐consumptive Utilization of Cetaceans was held in Boston and discussed a
number of “uses” of whales, including whale watching. Leading scientists, politicians and non‐governmental
organisations, led by the host Connecticut Cetacean Society (now Cetacean Society International) attended. The
report was presented to IWC meeting the following year to opposition from Japan and the USSR. Better known
by its short title, Whales Alive was co‐sponsored by the International Whaling Commission, IFAW and other
conservation organisations and marked the launch of whale watching in the International Whaling Commission.
At around this time, IFAW tentatively started its practical work on whale watching with an aerial survey in The
Seychelles in 1980 to see if whale watching might be feasible in the newly established sanctuary. Since then
IFAW’s whale watching activities have grown as whale watching itself has expanded and developed. Several
other organisations, particularly the UK‐based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and Humane Society
International have also stayed the course. As whale watching expanded, so efforts focused on ensuring that it
was conducted in an appropriate fashion, avoiding disturbance to the whales.
IFAW’s work on whale watching splits into two parts. There has been a long‐running programme to use whale
watching as a way of countering whaling and specifically to insert whale watching into the International Whaling
Commission as an alternative “use” of whales that is infinitely preferable to whaling. Secondly, country‐specific
activities have been conducted in a number of key locations, with the present and previous Song of the Whale
and Team often contributing to that work.
1. Whale Watching and Whaling
Arguably, IFAW’s work on whale watching as a way of influencing the commercial whaling debate started in
1988, when work was funded on a feasibility study for whale watching in Iceland. The motivation for this work
was to see whether a counterpoint to whaling interests could be established in Iceland. IFAW’s work in the
1 Whales Weep Not by DH Lawrence
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