(from "Who's Afraid of Compromise?", Simon Ward, published by ICR, 1990)

Dr. Ray Gambell
Secretary to the Commission, International Whaling Commission

On 2 December 1946 the representatives of fifteen nations who had been meeting in Washington D.C., USA signed a new International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. It is worth quoting the key clauses from the Preamble to the Convention to understand the thinking which led to this action:

"Recognising the interest of the nations of the world in safeguarding for future generations the great natural resources represented by the whale stocks;

Considering that the history of whaling has seen over-fishing of one area after another and of one species of whale after another to such a degree that it is essential to protect all species of whales from further over-fishing;

Recognising that the whale stocks are susceptible of natural increases if whaling is properly regulated, and that increases in the size of whale stocks will permit increases in the number of whales which may be captured without endangering these natural resources;

Recognising that it is in the common interest to achieve the optimum level of whale stocks as rapidly as possible without causing widespread economic and nutritional distress;

Recognising that in the course of achieving these objectives, whaling operations should be confined to those species best able to sustain exploitation in order to give an interval for recovery to certain species of whales now depleted in numbers;"

The delegates then

"decided to conclude a convention to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry."

Whaling

It has to be said at the outset that this new Convention did not do very much to prevent the further over-fishing of whale stocks around the world which had been occurring for many centuries. The capacity of the whaling industry to catch whales seems always to have been greater than the reproductive potential of the various whale species and stocks. The history of whaling has therefore been one of successive discovery, hunting and depletion of each new resource. The International Whaling Commission established under the 1946 Convention may have slowed down this process to some extent, but the fact remains that many more whale stocks are much reduced in abundance now than when the high ideals of the Convention were adopted.

Apart from the coastal whaling operations conducted by a number of countries, the major whaling activity in the early years of the IWC was the factory ship expeditions to the Antarctic and in the North Pacific. Norway, the founder of modern whaling through its development of the explosive grenade harpoon fired from a cannon mounted on a fast powered catcher vessel, the United Kingdom, Japan and the USSR were the principal nations involved in the Antarctic fishery, together with the Netherlands, South Africa and Panama. Because of the fierce competition between the individual whaling companies concerned to take the largest catches possible, and therefore to maximise their profits on the very considerable investments, it was difficult if not impossible to get agreement on catch levels which might be anywhere near sustainable. The scientific evidence at the time was not quantitative or firm, and the power of the whaling companies in determining national policies meant that too many whales were permitted to be caught, even though the qualitative evidence on the abundance of the stocks indicated considerable cause for concern.

Eventually in 1960 the IWC reached a crisis point and set up an independent Committee of Three (later Four) Scientists who introduced the newly developing techniques of fishery population analysis to the whaling problem. The advice they gave led to the IWC drastically reducing the permitted catches and gave complete protection to certain stocks and species in the greatest danger of extinction. The IWC also decided to set catch limits in the future at or below the levels which the stocks could sustain, based on the best scientific evidence. Thus the Commission placed a heavy duty on its scientists to determine the numbers and productivity of the various stocks, in order to implement a management procedure adopted in 1975 which was designed to give the highest long-term harvests.

Science

The original intention of the diplomats and others who drew up the 1946 Convention was clearly to conduct the whale fishery on a long-term continuing basis. This implies having sufficient knowledge of the abundance, trends and characteristics of the whales being hunted so that they are not caught in such numbers as to endanger their survival. In recent years though, as more has been learnt about the recruitment, age structure, composition and related aspects of the stocks, this greater knowledge has served also to demonstrate the degree of ignorance which still remains. It was because of uncertainties about the levels and trends of the stocks that the IWC took the decision in 1982 to set catch limits for all commercial whaling at zero from 1986, and thus give the whales the benefit of the doubts. At the same time, the Scientific Committee of the IWC started work on an in-depth evaluation of the status of stocks in the light of management objectives and procedures. This will also provide advice to the Commission when in 1990 it starts to review the effect of its decision on the stocks.

Scientific research on the whale stocks in the early years of this century was largely descriptive in nature, but with the rise of concern over the effects of the catches in the Antarctic, more attention was paid to the dynamics and responses of the whales to their exploitation. Particularly since the Second World War the various national research groups located in the major whaling countries have used the opportunities provided by the whaling fleets to sample, measure and analyse the catches. In addition, research activity separate from the whaling operations has been carried out, but this has inevitably been very expensive.

In recent years, with only Japan and the USSR conducting Antarctic whaling, there has been a move towards the development of research techniques which do not rely on the availability of whale carcasses for the observations and records needed to study the whales. The introduction of the pause in commercial whaling, even if it is only temporary, has further directed attention to the so-called benign or non-invasive research programmes. Unfortunately, there are still some key questions concerning the lives of whales, such as age and mortality, as well as aspects of reproduction and growth, which cannot yet be immediately determined without access to tissues and organs from within the carcasses.

Special Scientific Permits

The drafters of the 1946 Convention recognised that there would be a need for scientific research to be carried out on whales which would otherwise be protected from capture under the normal regulations governing commercial whaling. They therefore included a provision to allow governments to grant special permits authorizing their animals to take, kill or treat whales for purposes of scientific research. This provision has been used by many countries over the years to allow limited catches of whales such as calves or other under-sized animals, lactating females or protected species in order to advance scientific knowledge of the whales. However, in the situation that commercial whaling is no longer allowed, albeit only temporarily, there has been the suspicion voiced by some people that governments issuing such permits are doing so in order to maintain the skills and operational effectiveness of the whaling fleets until there is a resumption of full commercial whaling.

Because of these concerns, the IWC has established a procedure whereby its Scientific Committee evaluates the Special Permits proposed by member governments in the light of the Commission's overriding objectives of the comprehensive assessment programme. Since the pause in commercial whaling was introduced, three governments, Iceland, Japan and Norway, have issued Special Permits. The Norwegian catches have been for very small numbers of whales in the North Atlantic nowhere near approaching the levels of the earlier commercial takes. The other two programmes have been for more substantial catches necessary to obtain statistically reliable results, but still much reduced from the commercial levels. None of these programmes has been specially designed for the IWC's comprehensive assessment, although some aspects do bear on it. For example, the Japanese programme in the Antarctic is expected to answer questions on the mortality rate in the younger minke whales, which is an important input to the existing management procedure. In addition, there are benign research programmes such as the large-scale and long-term sightings programme to assess the minke whales in the Southern Hemisphere. As a result, there has been no unanimity in either the Scientific Committee or the IWC on the value of these Special Permit studies, although Resolutions calling for their withdrawal or reconsideration have been passed by majority vote in the Commission.

Conclusion

Popular attitudes towards whales have changed dramatically over the past two decades. Ever since the United Nations Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 the whale has been the symbol for the environmental community. The movement to "save the whale" has focussed on the dangers of extinction, the lack of humaneness in the killing process, and the large brain and presumed "intelligence" of whales. Set against this, the 1946 Convention was clearly established as a whaling treaty, which has proved to be sufficiently flexible to permit interpretation in a way which reflects much modern thinking about whales and our attitudes towards them. Nonetheless, the Convention was, and is, concerned to regulate whaling on the basis of scientific information in order to sustain both the whaling industry and the whales. There will be a continuing debate over the relative importance of these two emphases in the coming years, but it would be unfortunate if the essential science needed to advance our knowledge and form a solid basis for our decision making was itself a victim of the debate.

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