Hunting the Whales

June 4th, 2007

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Last week, the International Whaling Commission (IWC), an intergovernmental organization founded in 1946 to regulate the commercial and scientific hunting of whales, held its 59th annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. Among its notable decisions was a resolution to uphold an indefinite moratorium on commercial whaling by IWC members that had been in effect since 1986.

Although the vote was symbolically important, it will have no practical effect on the whale hunting now conducted by Japan, Norway, Iceland, and certain other countries. Since the moratorium was approved, Japan has continued to kill large numbers of whales each year under a provision of the IWC’s founding treaty, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), that allows member countries to issue permits to their nationals to kill whales for “scientific research.” Norway, meanwhile, has been legally entitled to continue commercial whale hunting because its objection on the grounds of national interest rendered it exempt from the ban. Iceland conducted its own ostensibly scientific killing of whales from 1986 to 1989 and again from 2003; in the interim it withdrew from (1992) and then rejoined (2001) the IWC. In the face of intense international criticism–largely but not exclusively from other IWC members–Japan, Norway, and Iceland intend to kill a total of some 2,500 great whales in 2007.

The IWC

The IWC was originally established “to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry.” It did so by setting annual killing quotas by species for both commercial and “aboriginal” hunts (i.e., hunts by indigenous communities for subsistence purposes) and by declaring certain seasons or geographic regions closed to hunting. Since the IWC had no enforcement authority, however, its decisions were often evaded or ignored, and by the 1960s the populations of several whale species had been greatly reduced. By this time, however, the whaling industry itself had begun to decline, reflecting both a dwindling worldwide demand for whale products and new public interest in issues related to conservation and the environment. Gradually these changes made themselves felt in the IWC, which slowly expanded its agenda to include conservation and protection, rather than merely efficient exploitation, of at least some whale species.

In 1958 the first United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea adopted a resolution calling on member states “to prescribe, by all means available to them, those methods for the capture and killing of marine life, especially of whales and seals, which will spare them suffering to the greatest extent possible.” In response, the IWC established a working committee on “humane and expeditious” killing, which concluded that the only significant factor in determining whether a method of killing was humane or not was the “time taken to inflict death.” In 1972 the United Nations Conference on the Environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden, called for an immediate 10-year moratorium on whale hunting. After 10 years of internal debate, the IWC agreed in 1982 to a trial five-year ban on commercial whaling, to last from 1986 to 1990; in 1994 the moratorium was declared an indefinite “pause” in commercial whaling. Norway objected to the ban in 1986 and was thereby exempt under IWC rules; Japan and Iceland, in contrast, quickly developed an intense scientific interest in the whale species they had previously hunted commercially.

“Scientific” whale hunting

Under the auspices of the Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR), established in 1987, one year after the commencement of the moratorium, Japan undertook the Japan Research Programme in the Antarctic (JARPA), in the course of which it killed approximately 440 Antarctic minke whales annually from 1987 to 2003. (JARPA continued after 1994 despite the IWC’s designation that year of the region south of 40 degrees S latitude as a Southern Ocean Sanctuary in which all commercial whale hunting would be prohibited.) JARPA II, proposed in 2005, called for the “sampling” of approximately 850 minke whales annually, as well as 50 humpback and 50 fin whales (the latter two species are endangered). Despite a request from the Scientific Committee of the IWC in 2005 that Japan either withdraw JARPA II or revise it so that more of its objectives could be met through “nonlethal” means, Japan issued permits to the ICR for the first two years of the program, through the Antarctic summer of 2006-07. (Under IWC rules, members must submit proposals for scientific hunting to the Scientific Committee but do not require the approval of the committee to conduct a scientific hunt.) Meanwhile, under JARPN, the Japan Research Programme in the North Pacific, Japan killed approximately 100 minke whales annually in the western North Pacific from 1994 to 1999. JARPN II, which Japan described as “a long-term research programme of undetermined duration,” entailed the annual killing of 150 minke whales as well as 50 Bryde’s whales, 50 sei whales, and 10 sperm whales (the latter two species are endangered). All the meat and blubber from the Japanese hunts is sold commercially, though Japan claims that this practice is in compliance with the ICRW rule that whales killed in scientific hunts not be wasted.

Iceland conducted scientific whale hunting from 1986 to 1989 and again from 2003. Its current research program calls for killing up to 250 minke, fin, and sei whales annually through 2007. In 2006 the country resumed commercial hunting, despite the IWC moratorium, announcing plans to kill 30 minke and 9 fin whales annually. After a five-year pause, Norway resumed commercial hunting in 1993. It has killed an average of 600 minke whales annually since then, though the Norwegian government increased the minke quota to more than 1,000 in 2006.

Since the late 1980s, numerous resolutions issued by the Scientific Committee of the IWC have found deficiencies in the scientific validity of JARPA and JARPN and have questioned their compliance with Article VIII of the ICRW, which sets forth the specific conditions under which scientific exceptions to whale hunting are permitted. According to regular majorities of the committee and many independent scientific observers, JARPA and JARPN fail to address critically important research needs as required by Article VIII, rely to an unacceptable degree on unsupported assumptions or untestable hypotheses, do not provide data relevant to the “management” of whale stocks under any future commercial whaling program, fail to consider nonlethal methods (such as biopsies) of obtaining various data, and fail to produce meaningful scientific results in the form of published, peer-reviewed papers. On the basis of these criticisms, anti-whale hunting members of the IWC and many environmental nongovernmental organizations have accused Japan of dishonestly exploiting Article VIII of the ICRW to continue commercial whaling in a scientific guise. Needless to say, Japan vigorously disputes these charges.

Killing methods

In modern commercial and “scientific” whale hunts the primary killing method is the penthrite (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) grenade harpoon, which is fired from a cannon mounted on the prow of the hunting vessel. The harpoon, which is aimed by hand, creates an initial hole in the whale’s body that is about 8 inches (20 cm) wide and 12 inches (30 cm) deep; the grenade in the harpoon then explodes, causing massive injury or death to the whale through laceration or trauma, including neurotrauma (trauma to the brain) produced by shock waves. Spring-loaded claws in the point of the harpoon extend to anchor the harpoon in the whale’s flesh, thereby also widening the hole in its body to about 24 inches. The whale can then be towed by the line attached to the harpoon. Often, however, the primary killing method fails to dispatch the whale; in that case, secondary killing methods, usually consisting of another penthrite grenade harpoon or several rifle shots, are used. If the first harpoon remains in the whale, the attached line serves to slow the animal or hold it in place while secondary killing methods are applied. Unfortunately, little data are available regarding the effectiveness of secondary killing methods, except as used in aboriginal subsistence whaling (see below).

In 1982 the IWC banned the use of the “cold,” or nonexploding, harpoon (also propelled by cannon) as inhumane, because the time it took to kill a whale by means of it was deemed excessive. Nevertheless, Japan continues to use the cold harpoon as a secondary killing method in its JARPN hunts. Until 1997 Japan also used a weapon called an electric lance, designed to kill whales by electrocution.

Objections to whale hunting

The chief objections to whale hunting are that it is inherently inhumane, causing an unacceptable amount of pain and suffering in the animals killed, and that, as practiced on a commercial scale, it threatens to drive (or already has driven) many species to the brink of extinction. Opponents also have argued that it is no longer necessary as a means of collecting scientific data on whale population, migration, physiology, or ethology. Defenders of whale hunting, particularly the Japanese government, have claimed that it is no more inhumane than various kinds of game hunting practiced and accepted in some anti-whale hunting countries (e.g., kangaroo hunting in Australia and, until recently, fox hunting in the United Kingdom); that, even on a commercial scale, it would be no threat to any species if properly managed by the IWC (notwithstanding the organization’s historical failure to manage commercial hunts); and that it is an important part of the economies of whale hunting countries. Japan also has asserted a cultural right to continue whale hunting, since whale meat is a traditional part of the Japanese diet.

The humanitarian objection to whale hunting is not new. In an address to University College, London, in 1947, the British physician Henry Lillie, who had spent a season aboard a whale hunting vessel in the Antarctic, declared:

“If we can imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears stuck into its stomach and being made to pull a butcher’s truck through the streets of London while it pours blood in the gutter, we shall have an idea of the present method of killing. The gunners themselves admit that if whales could scream the industry would stop, for nobody would be able to stand it.”

Contemporary legal formulations of the humanitarian objection are typically framed in terms of statistical measures called “time to death” (TTD) and “instantaneous death rate” (IDR). In addition, the objection pays special attention to various facts of whale physiology and to the limitations imposed by the physical circumstances of the hunt.

Thus, according to incomplete data submitted to the IWC by Japan and Norway for the years 1998 to 2002, the average TTD for whales killed in “scientific” and commercial hunts was more than two minutes; some whales took 90 minutes to die. For the JARPA hunt during this period, the average IDR—the percentage of whales killed within 10 seconds of the impact of the harpoon—was 40 percent; for the Norwegian hunts, it was about 80 percent. About three-fifths of the whales killed by Japan and about one-fifth of those killed by Norway, therefore, did not die “instantaneously.” (Japan failed to disclose maximum TTD data for JARPA and provided no TTD or IDR data of any kind for JARPN.)

The cruelty of this kind of hunting, which entails a protracted and immensely painful death for a significant proportion of the targeted whales, is evident. It is noteworthy, moreover, that the TTD and IDR rates remain strikingly poor (especially in the Japanese case) despite the fact that both countries employ the most technologically sophisticated hunting and tracking equipment available. One likely cause of this situation is that, of necessity, whales are hunted in physical circumstances that make hitting them with a harpoon in appropriate parts of their bodies (the head or thorax) extremely difficult: the whale is usually at a considerable distance from the gunner; both the whale and the gunner are in constant motion; and weather conditions can significantly reduce visibility and in other ways impair the accuracy of the gunner’s aim.

Opponents of whale hunting point out another element of typical whale hunts whose cruelty tends to be overlooked: the pursuit itself. In Japanese hunts of minke whales, for example, pursuits frequently last 30 minutes and sometimes as long as 90 minutes; hunters deliberately raise the targeted whale’s respiratory rate in order to force it to surface more often. Such pursuits impose severe physical (and, arguably, psychological) strains that can later cause debilitating injury, paralysis, or death in whales who manage to escape the hunting vessel.

Opponents of whale hunting also note that data such as these would be considered unacceptable if whales were required to be treated in the same way as agricultural animals slaughtered for human food. Legislation in many countries and international regulations of the European Union, for example, require that food animals be instantaneously stunned, or rendered unconscious, before they are killed and that they be unconscious or anesthetized at the time of death. Needless to say, these standards also would forbid any method of slaughter that involved chasing an animal with an axe until it fell down exhausted. Although whales are not covered by legislation governing the treatment of agricultural animals, some opponents of whale hunting argue that they should be, since all hunted whales, whether they are killed for commercial or “scientific” purposes, wind up as human food.

The humanitarian objection to whale hunting is further supported by considerations of whale physiology. Since 1980 the IWC has recommended three basic criteria for determining when a whale is actually dead: relaxation of the mandible, cessation of flipper movement, and sinking without any active swimming. The criteria may be applied exclusively, meaning that the presence of just one is sufficient. However, because whales are capable of holding their breath and significantly decreasing their heart rates for long periods, because it can be quite difficult to distinguish active from passive flipper movement amid the motion of the waves, and because whales sometimes sink without swimming in normal circumstances, it is doubtful that any one of these criteria is a valid indicator of death (as opposed to mere injury) by itself. Indeed, according to a study published by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 2003 (reporting the results of an international workshop of scientists and veterinarians in 2001), the IWC’s criteria are scientifically inadequate.

Thus, alarming as the TTD and IDR statistics are in themselves, they may in fact significantly understate the extent of the suffering the hunted whales endure, since many whales may be alive much longer than these statistics show or may even be alive when they are hoisted onto the floor of the factory ship for butchering.

Aboriginal subsistence whaling

Despite its present focus on protection and conservation, the IWC recognizes the legitimacy of what it calls aboriginal subsistence whaling, though it regulates this form of hunting by issuing five-year killing quotas scaled to the needs of indigenous communities and by requiring that all the meat and blubber be consumed locally. Currently the IWC allows subsistence hunting in Greenland, Russia, the United States, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The humanitarian objection to whale hunting arguably applies with greater force to aboriginal subsistence whaling than to commercial and scientific whaling, since the hunting technology employed in the former case is usually less efficient. Weapons used include cannon-propelled exploding or cold harpoons, spears, and rifles. Naturally, TTDs are much higher and IDRs much lower: recent data show an average TTD of nearly one hour and IDRs of no more than 17 percent. Some whales have taken 3 to 5 hours to die after being shot with up to 600 bullets.

Although the IWC has made some recommendations to lessen the cruelty involved in aboriginal subsistence whaling, its efforts have been complicated by its desire to respect indigenous cultures and by a lack of uniform data regarding aboriginal hunting practices in various parts of the world.

Image: Harpooning a minke whale, © Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert—Corbis

To Learn More

• The International Whaling Commission
• Whalewatch.org including video footage of whale hunting
• Scientific Reports on Whaling hosted by the International Fund for Animal Welfare
• The Institute of Cetacean Research (pro-whaling)

How Can I Help?

• Take Action to Save Whales numerous action items from the Humane Society of the United States
• Support “people’s” anti-whaling campaigns sponsored by Greenpeace International
• Write to whale killing countries hosted by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society