About whaling

The world’s oceans could soon be opened up to a bloody and cruel slaughter that should have been consigned to history.  A slaughter that saw many whale populations brought to the brink of extinction last century.

Both commercial whaling and international trade in whale products are currently banned.  However, Japan, Norway and Iceland, together kill over 2000 whales each year and are expanding their international trade in whale products.

This year, a number of governments represented at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) seem set to vote for a proposal that would lift the ban on commercial whaling by granting Japan legal commercial whaling quotas in its coastal waters in return for voluntarily reducing its controversial ‘scientific’ whaling in Antarctica.

If adopted, this deal will open the floodgates for other countries to restart or expand their own whaling.  WDCS has called for the rejection of the deal as unworkable, unenforceable and dangerous for the conservation of whales.

The long and infamous history of commercial whaling has demonstrated that it is impossible to ensure that hunts are properly regulated, sustainable and humane. Even after 60 years of research, restrictions by the IWC and huge public interest, there remains:

• no humane way to kill a whale at sea
• no mechanism (that the whaling nations are willing to accept) to ensure compliance with effective regulations
• no scientific certainty about the ability of whale populations to withstand hunting in the face of growing environmental threats including climate change.

Norway, Iceland and Japan are not the only countries voting in favour of whaling at the IWC.  For years, Japan has been recruiting countries with no obvious interest in whaling to join the IWC and vote in its favour, using development aid as an incentive.  In addition, many countries that were once firmly opposed to commercial whaling have felt pressured by Japan’s ever expanding whale hunts to make a compromise that will be dangerous for whale conservation.

To read more about our campaign to stop commercial whaling for good, click on Our Campaign.  For more about whaling, read our briefings below:

Japanese whaling
Norwegian whaling
Icelandic whaling
The cruelty of whaling
Aboriginal Subsistence whaling