7. Stock Assessments

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


The joint Working Party on Antarctic Whale Stock Assessment, made up of scientists from the Commission and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, met in Seattle in January 1966 and two members followed up by studying the 1965/66 season data in May 1966 and reporting on the status of the stocks at the end of this season. Both reports were studied by the Scientific Committee which recommended to the Commission that the best estimate of the present sustainable yields for the whole Antarctic was as follows: 
    Fin Whales: 4,500                   Sei Whales 4,500-7,500

In terms of Blue Whale Units this means a total of 3,000 to 3,500.


8. The Committee recommended that the Commission should consider setting quotas sufficiently below the level of the sustainable yield so that fin whale stocks could begin to rebuild, rather than simply be maintained at the present low level. The Commission was asked to consider giving complete protection to fin whales to allow this valuable stock to rebuild. The Committee recommended that protection of blue whales should be extended to the whole of the Southern Hemisphere.


9. So far as stock assessment work in the following year was concerned, the Commission accepted the recommendation of both Scientific and Technical Committees that stock assessment work should be continued in the following year; very precise work must be carried out in view of the importance to be placed on the estimates that would be made of the sustainable yields.

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