17. SECOND INTERNATIONAL DECADE OF CETACEAN RESEARCH

(from "Chairman's Report of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Meeting")


The Scientific Committee agreed that there was value in retaining the concept of the IDCR during the period of the Comprehensive Assessment, noting that the IDCR would continue after 1990. The value of proposed research to the Comprehensive Assessment would be a significant factor in evaluating proposals and determining priorities. Appropriate criteria would be examined next year.

Last year the Commission had funded two programmes: the Southern Hemisphere Minke Whale Assessment Cruise, and the study of the social organisation of sperm whales off the Galapagos Islands. A minke whale assessment cruise in Antarctic Area III as the first priority area, and a radio telemetric study giving information on tag retention in blue, fin and humpback whales were proposed for support next year.

Japan commented that it had spent US $ 15 million on the Antarctic minke whale research over the last nine years. The methods and theory in these studies were improving, and this is at present the only source of information on baleen whales in the area. It intended to continue this work.

The Technical Committee and the Commission took note.

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