Whales In The Wild

WWF's Campaign for Whale Conservation


Save the whales



he plight of the great whales was so desperate by the early 1960s that it was among the reasons for the foundation of WWF. Sir Peter Scott, one of the founders of WWF, wrote in his 1962 "Conservation Creed": "What man did to the Dodo, and has since been doing to the Blue Whale and about 1,000 other kinds of animals, may or may not be morally wrong. But the conservation of nature is most important because of what nature does for man". In fact, the foundation of WWF in October 1961 coincided with the highest ever number of whales reported killed: 66,090 in the 1961-1962 Antarctic whaling season — mostly fin and sperm whales, since the blue whales had by then been hunted close to extinction.

Sir Peter Scott was also chairman of IUCN's Species Survival Commission (SSC). In 1963 he set up its Cetacean Specialist Group to investigate what was happening to the great whales. The SSC's very first List of Rare Mammals and Birds (precursor of the IUCN Red Data Books), drawn up in 1964, included six species of great whales: blue — which it named as the most endangered of all the large whales — fin, humpback, bowhead, and the northern and southern right whales.

From 1965 to 1987, Sir Peter Scott was WWF's spokesman at the yearly meetings of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). He reported that "what is going on is a world scandal of considerable magnitude". For nearly a quarter of a century he helped expose this scandal and then — step by step — to put an end to it. Vigorous advocacy of reducing, and if possible, stopping, the appalling depletion of whale populations was one of the first steps taken by WWF. Diplomacy and promotion of whale conservation by WWF helped to convince the IWC to reduce catch quotas by a modest amount and to impose a ban on the hunting of blue and humpback whales in the Antarctic. But by this time, the ban was much too late to halt the decline in blue whale numbers. In the previous season, whalers had been able to find only 20 blue whales in the whole of the Southern Ocean. In another initiative in 1966, world-renowned aviator and WWF Trustee General Charles Lindburgh convinced Peru's largest whaling company to stop killing blue and humpback whales in the Pacific for at least two years.

Meanwhile IUCN kept up pressure on the IWC's Scientific Committee, many of whose members blatantly put short-term political interests ahead of scientific conservation and sound management. Until 1972 the IWC did not set catch limits by individual species of whales, but by the commercially important species of baleen whales as a group, and even then only for the Antarctic. Quotas were given in "blue whale units". For example, one blue whale, or two fin whales, or 2.5 humpback whales, or six sei whales. As a basis for trying to make whaling sustainable, this system was totally unworkable.

In spite of the efforts of WWF and IUCN and some modest success in reducing IWC quotas, they made little headway in the IWC during the 1960s. The lower quotas in part reflected the fact that the whalers were no longer able to find whales so easily, so that there was less economic sacrifice in agreeing to lower catch limits.

The UN calls for a moratorium

Even though the true extent of the killing was not known at the time, public concern and anger at what was happening to the great whales was building up rapidly in many countries around the world, especially among WWF supporters. "Saving the whales" came to symbolize the fast-growing concern for saving the whole planet from overexploitation by humans. As Sir Peter Scott said in 1972: "If we cannot save the whales from extinction we have little chance of saving mankind and the life-supplying biosphere".

WWF helped channel this public concern into action at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. A symbolic whale-sized balloon led a procession through the streets of Stockholm, and whales were the focus of much discussion. With the help of vigorous lobbying of the delegates, a recommendation calling for a 10-year moratorium on commercial whaling was adopted — including Norway, the only nation still conducting commercial whaling 23 years later. One abstention was Japan, the most important whaling country. Japan recorded its technical reasons for abstaining, but also declared that "it was favourable to a moratorium on commercial whaling".

Although this landmark recommendation was endorsed by the UN General Assembly, and was later reaffirmed several times by the UNEP Governing Council, the IWC rejected it. At the IWC meeting only two weeks after the Stockholm Conference, Peter Scott again appealed in vain to the delegates to heed world opinion and to stop defying "the collective conscience of mankind". Only four members (USA, UK, Argentina, and Mexico) out of the 14 members of the Commission present at the meeting voted for a moratorium.

The struggle for the moratorium

During the next few months international support for a 10-year moratorium on commercial whaling reached an all time high: On the opening day of the 1973 meeting of the IWC in London, conservationists published in the form of an advertisement in the Times of London an open letter to the Commission under the headline, "One is killed every 20 minutes: Is this carnage necessary?"

Signatories of this open letter to the IWC — which urged the IWC to uphold the Stockholm recommendation — were WWF President and Chairman, HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Sir Peter Scott, WWF National Organizations in the UK and the US, and the IUCN President and Director General.

As of 1973, the USSR and Japan were hunting around 80 per cent of the world's whales. Dr Sidney Holt, then Advisor on Marine Affairs with the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nation's Department of Fisheries, and other scientists questioned the principles and methods used by the IWC to regulate whaling and set catch quotas. A proposal for the 10-year moratorium was put forward by the US at the meeting and was defeated. WWF kept the pressure on the world's whalers to stop the unregulated slaughter and in October of that year renewed the call for a moratorium on the hunting of whales at its 3rd International Congress in Bonn, Germany.

In order to alleviate the growing global concern over the fate of the world's whales, a compromise was struck. In 1974, a new management procedure for whales (NMP) was adopted by the IWC. This strategy was an attempt — for the first time ever — to manage whales on a "sustainable basis". Catch quotas were set on a stock by stock and species by species basis. The NMP also aimed at fully protecting severely depleted whale populations in order to maximize their chances of recovery. The responsibility for developing the NMP was placed on the IWC's Scientific Committee.

Within a few years it became obvious that the NMP had failed. Whale populations were continuing to decline. The whalers were not providing the data to the IWC which the Scientific Committee could use to assess more realistically the status of whale stocks. Under the NMP, whalers could kill the same number of whales as they had previously done, until evidence showed that these whale stocks were declining. This did not motivate whaling nations to provide information or data to the IWC which would lower the number of whales they could hunt.

A sea change in the IWC

In 1976, WWF launched The Seas Must Live Campaign. The fate of the world's whales and other cetaceans was the centrepiece of WWF's special three-year marine programme. The campaign aimed at safeguarding marine mammals and their critical habitats and to stimulate governments and intergovernmental agencies to act on a wider scale. The humpback whale was chosen as the symbol for the campaign which included a review of the NMP by an impartial body of whale scientists, putting forward proposals for an international network of whale sanctuaries, developing non-lethal (benign) methods of research for counting whales, and pressing national and international authorities for action to save whales.

Picture of a demonstration for whales


This campaign aimed at raising funds for the establishment of an international system of whale sanctuaries. It inspired creation of marine reserves around the world including the Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary, Ecuador's whale and marine mammal sanctuary in the Galαpagos Islands, and Brazil's Abrolhos Marine National Park.

By 1978, the atmosphere of the IWC had undergone a sea change. It had acquired new members, many of them conservation-minded. People around the globe were listening to "whale songs", first recorded by scientists Dr Roger Payne and Katy Payne, and television viewers were spellbound by underwater images of Survival Anglia's Gentle Giants of the Pacific, filmed by world-renowned underwater cameraman, Al Giddings. Whale enthusiasts flocked to Hawaii, Mexico's Gulf of California, and Cape Cod to witness firsthand the mystery of the world's whales. They swam with them, photographed them leaping from the water, and listened to their voices vibrate the boats from which they beheld these wonders of nature.

Scientists and environmentalists joined forces. Massive demonstrations were held protesting against the whaling nations. In London, in 1979, just before the opening of the annual IWC meeting, thousands of people rallied at Trafalgar Square where Sir Peter Scott announced that a million signatures had been presented to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by WWF's junior unit, the Wildlife Youth Service. The petition pressed all Members of Parliament to support a ban on whaling.

During the 1979 meeting, a moratorium on all deep sea whaling using factory ships for whales other than minkes was carried by a vote of 18 to two, with Japan and the USSR the only nations to vote against it. At the same meeting, the IWC accepted evidence that Japan's Taiyo Fisheries Company, the largest privately-owned fisheries company in the world, had been involved in setting up and dealing with illegal pirate whaling operations.

Also in 1979, a news item in the London Sunday Times reported that a prominent British scientist had received a letter from a Soviet scientific worker aboard a factory ship alleging that the USSR was breaking the laws of the whaling industry. His fleet alone had taken 1,916 whales more than its quota. In 1993, the world learned that this letter was not a hoax: Soviet fleets had been killing massive numbers of the world's most endangered whales right through the 1960s and 1970s and selling the meat to Japan. In 1993, a letter sent to WWF from a leading Russian scientist, Dr AV Yablokov, revealed the "enormous scale of the Soviet falsifications of the official data for IWC". Between 1949 and 1980, the USSR killed over 3,200 right whales (protected since 1935) and over 48,450 humpback whales (protected by the IWC in 1963). The new data also shows that 1,433 highly endangered blue whales, (protected by the IWC in 1965) were also slaughtered. The Soviet fleet reported that they had killed only 156. Further deceptions involved large catches of Bryde's whales and sei whales in the Indian Ocean in 1972, and of sperm whales north of Hawaii up to 1975 when that population was wiped out. All this happened despite the presence of national observers on the ships, and continued even after an international observer scheme was in force, with Japanese observers.

The Indian Ocean Sanctuary

However, some hope for the whales was on the horizon. In 1979, the IWC declared the entire Indian Ocean — from the coast of Africa west to Australia, and from the Red and Arabian Seas and the Gulf of Oman south to 55oS latitude — as a whale sanctuary. Development of the proposal grew out of discussions during a joint IUCN/WWF/UNEP Workshop on Cetacean Sanctuaries in Mexico in 1978.

At the 1979 meeting of the IWC, the government of the Seychelles successfully promoted the proposal for the Indian Ocean Sanctuary (IOS), ensuring that commercial whaling would be prohibited there for at least ten years. In 1989 the IOS was extended for a further three years, and then in 1992 the IWC agreed by consensus that it should remain a sanctuary for an indefinite period. As soon as the sanctuary was declared, WWF-Netherlands began to raise funds to help finance research. In 1980, HRH Prince Bernard, President of WWF-Netherlands launched an appeal which raised 400,000 Guilders (US$250,000) dedicated to the study of living whales in the new sanctuary.

Public outcry over IWC-sanctioned whale hunting and pirate whaling reached a crescendo in 1980: the IWC set quotas for the killing of some 14,000 whales, rejected a moratorium on commercial whaling, ignored the Scientific Committee's recommendation for a zero quota for sperm whales in the Western North Pacific, and slated Japan for involvement in pirate whaling activities. Japan promised to tighten whale meat import controls, after admitting that in 1979-1980, more than 850 tonnes of whale meat had been imported from Taiwan via South Korea. In 1979, its total import of whale meat was 27,000 tonnes.

Conservation-minded delegates went to the 1981 meeting of the IWC in the UK armed with new ammunition to halt the whales' steady plunge to extinction. Many IWC member nations cited and actively supported the 1980 World Conservation Strategy (WCS), prepared by IUCN with the support of UNEP, WWF, FAO, and Unesco. The WCS, recognized globally as a benchmark for conservation, calls for a moratorium on all commercial whaling to last until certain conditions can be fulfilled.

At the July 1981 meeting of the IWC, three separate proposals for a global moratorium on commercial whaling were made — and defeated. The IWC declared a zero quota on sperm whale hunting in all sectors except the Western North Pacific — a stock exploited by Japan's coastal stations. The majority of members of the Scientific Committee had recommended protection for that stock as well. The Commission agreed to hold a special meeting of the IWC and the Scientific Committee in March 1982. The IWC also set quotas for 13,356 whales, down slightly from the previous year's quota. The special meeting convened by the IWC in March to set a quota on sperm whales in the Western Pacific ended in confusion and deadlock. The commission deferred its decision until its annual meeting in July. Astonished NGOs and many conservation-minded IWC Commissioners strengthened their resolve to bring about a moratorium on commercial whaling at the July meeting.

The Tulip project

Meanwhile, WWF was already using the money raised by WWF-Netherlands to fund studies of live sperm whales and other cetaceans in the Indian Ocean Sanctuary.

In September 1981, WWF and the IWC co-funded a workshop convened under the auspices of the governments of the Seychelles and the Netherlands. At the workshop, 36 leading whale experts from 14 countries reviewed the state of benign whale research, and prepared a programme of projects for investigating population levels, ecology, and behaviour of the 43 cetacean species in the Indian Ocean Sanctuary.

One of the most important outcomes of this workshop was WWF's "Tulip" project, funded by WWF-Netherlands. The Tulip was a 10-metre ocean-going yacht, which carried out innovative research into sperm whales and other cetaceans in the Indian Ocean between 1981 and 1984. Before this project there had been little attempt to study living sperm whales, even though their social system was known to be very different from the other large whales.

Much of Tulip's work was conducted off Sri Lanka, from the port of Trincomalee. Family groups of 10–20 sperm whales were followed for days on end, tracking them from their underwater clicking sounds. Many new benign techniques were developed, including photographic identification and measurement, studying particular groups for long periods using snorkellers and video, faecal analysis of diet, studying their feeding behaviour from depth sounder traces, and estimating populations from acoustic censuses. Tulip scientists also recorded the first Indian Ocean humpback whale songs off Oman and Sri Lanka, and discovered and studied a population of blue whales off Trincomalee.

Soon after the Tulip set sail in the Indian Ocean, images of blue and sperm whales and the Tulip crew were beamed around the globe. They drew dramatic attention to the plight of the world's whales, and the fact that they could be studied without killing them.

Jubilation over whale ban

For months leading up to the meeting and immediately beforehand — largely under the inspired leadership of WWF's Chairman, Sir Peter Scott, and Greenpeace Chairman, David McTaggart — NGOs representing all the diverse elements of the conservation and animal welfare movement united, perhaps for the first time. They held joint press conferences, lobbied governments, and staged rallies in pursuit of their common goal: to save the world's whales from extinction.

At the IWC annual meeting in July 1982, in the late hours of an extended session, the government of the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, tabled a resolution for a moratorium on commercial whaling, beginning in 1985-1986. Solidarity among conservation groups was as it had never been. A vote was called, and one by one the nations revealed their governments' positions. The room was deathly quiet until the chairman of the IWC read out the results of the vote: The indefinite moratorium on commercial whaling had been passed by a majority of 25 to 7, with 5 abstentions. A round of applause rang out. The winning moment for the whales symbolized a shared commitment which had brought about one of the most dramatic victories in the history of conservation.

"I don't think any species will have gone in three year's time. The danger of extinction has disappeared!", Sir Peter Scott told a jubilant crowd who embraced and cheered in the lobby outside the conference room. According to the vote, the moratorium was to begin in 1982 and be completed by the 1985-1986 season. Although conservationists were able to reduce whale quotas overall by 1,733 whales, over 12,577 whales would still die for commercial and aboriginal purposes. The quota for the North Pacific sperm whale was 450 for 1982 and 400 for 1983.

Within 90 days, Japan, Norway, USSR, and Peru lodged official objections to the moratorium, thus ensuring their right to continue whaling after 1986. In 1984, Japan announced that it intended to continue to hunt sperm whales in its coastal waters until 1988 — two years after the commercial whaling moratorium was to come into place.

Defending the moratorium

With the moratorium decision, WWF's campaign in the IWC entered a new phase. In 1983, the first global gathering on the benign use of cetaceans, the IWC Whales Alive Conference, called for the IWC to change its direction from killing whales to conserving and studying them. A wide variety of NGOs continued to send representatives as observers to the annual IWC meetings. By working together, and backed up by the force of the public opinion they represented, they were able to exert considerable influence on the proceedings. Year by year, they helped drive — on scientific grounds — the quotas on the number of whales to lower and lower levels. Most notably, the work of a small group of very able scientists was supported by WWF and some other NGOs. These scientists worked in the IWC's Scientific Committee on a replacement for the discredited 1974 New Management Procedure.

In the face of continuing uncertainty about whale population levels, this replacement for the NMP would give the benefit of the doubt to the whales and not to the whalers. WWF's aims were both to perpetuate the moratorium by showing how difficult it would be in practice ever to achieve truly "sustainable" whaling, and to ensure that if the IWC ever voted to remove the moratorium, the adverse consequences to whales would be minimized.

The independent scientists soon established that under the NMP, whale population declines could not be detected until long after they had occurred, so that warnings of depletion came far too late. Some progress had been made in estimating whale population levels, such as the number of minke whales in the Southern Hemisphere, but the figures were not nearly precise enough to be able to monitor changes in stocks in periods shorter than decades; and the boundaries between different stocks used by the IWC for management purposes had very little scientific justification, although they had played an important part in the NMP.

Whaling during the moratorium

Some of the whaling countries which opposed the 1982 moratorium were convinced of the need to halt commercial whaling before the 1986 deadline. But others including Japan and Iceland slipped through a loophole in the convention and continued to kill whales for so-called scientific purposes. WWF exposed this loophole and other attempts to skirt the whaling ban at an international symposium held in Oslo on the eve of the annual 1985 IWC meeting. World renowned Norwegian biologist and anthropologist, Dr Thor Heyerdahl, denounced Norway's attempts to continue whaling. At the symposium, WWF discredited Norway and Japan's attempt to declare a new category of coastal whaling.

In the US, NGOs including Greenpeace boycotted Icelandic fish products and Japan Airlines and called on the US government to impose sanctions on IWC members who did not comply with IWC recommendations. Environmentalists took the US government to court because of an unorthodox agreement between the US Secretary of Commerce and Japan which would allow Japan to take 1,200 sperm whales up to 1988, if Japan agreed to stop commercial whaling by that time.

Japan withdrew its objection to the whaling ban, but it has side-stepped the moratorium on commercial whaling until this day. Its whaling boats hunted sperm whales until 1988 and its factory ships have carried out "scientific" whaling for around 300 minke whales every year in the Southern Ocean. Under Article VIII of the 1946 Whaling Convention, members of the IWC are given the right to grant their nationals special permits allowing whales to be killed for "purposes of scientific research". These permits, and the results of the research, have to be reported to the IWC and its Scientific Committee, but these bodies can only comment on them, not veto the research. Before the moratorium came into effect, this loophole in the convention was rarely abused by IWC members. WWF and other NGOs have kept the heat on Japan and Norway to stop their lethal whale research, which is clearly for commercial purposes. Year after year, the NGOs have encouraged the IWC to pass resolutions "requesting" the countries involved to refrain from this whaling.

Since the moratorium came into effect in 1985-1986, Japan has killed more than 2,400 whales under the guise of science. Iceland and South Korea also conducted scientific whaling programmes. WWF scientists have repeatedly stated that there is practically nothing more that we can learn by killing whales than we already know.

The USSR and Norway have maintained their official objections to the moratorium which means that they are not legally bound by it. The USSR stopped all commercial whaling after the 1986-87 Antarctic season, but Norway has killed whales every year except 1991. Since the moratorium came into force, Norway has killed 287 whales for so-called science, and 1,117 for commercial purposes in 1986, 1987, 1993, and 1994.




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Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature