11. Sperm Whale Stocks

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



The Scientific Committee reported that no new assessment data were available in regard to sperm whales. No new conservation measures were therefore proposed and the Commission endorsed the Technical Committee's request that the Scientific Committee should look at the evidence and see whether they thought that the minimum size limits for sperm whales were satisfactory from a scientific point of view. The Committee recommended that the F.A.O. Assessment Group should convene a workshop meeting for the assessment of sperm whale stocks before May 1968. It also recommended that a meeting be convened early in 1968 to resolve some of the age determination problems for sperm whales and baleen whales.

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