9. Protection of Blue Whales

(from "Chairman's Report of the Seventeenth Meeting")


The Commission agreed without dissent that in Paragraph 4 of the Schedule it would be forbidden to kill or attempt to kill blue whales in the Pacific Ocean and its dependent waters north of the equator for five years beginning with the 1966 season. The proposal was made by the Commissioner for Canada and seconded by the Commissioner for the United States of America.


10. The taking of blue whales in the area south of 40° South Latitude is forbidden but this provision in the Schedule was objected to after the Sixteenth Meeting by all the Antarctic pelagic whaling countries. The result is that blue whales are still unprotected in Antarctic waters north of 55° South Latitude from 0° eastwards to 80° East Longitude. Acting on a resolution proposed by the Commissioner for Australia and seconded by the Commissioner for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Commission therefore agreed at this meeting to an appeal being sent to the Antarctic pelagic countries to ask them to withdraw their objection to the change in the Schedule, Paragraph 6(3) brought about by the deletion of the words "except in the waters north of 55° South Latitude from 0° eastwards to 80° East Longitude."

_