Whaling

Although historically, commercial whaling was conducted primarily for oil (rendered from whale fat or blubber) and spermaceti (from the head cavity of sperm whales and used to make candles, cosmetics, and lubricant), whales are mainly hunted today for meat and blubber used as human food.

Cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) are also killed in a misguided effort to reduce competition with humans for fish, while several small whale, dolphin, and porpoise species (collectively known as small cetaceans) are hunted for use as bait to catch fish, or for their teeth, which can have cultural and commercial value. Some small cetaceans (primarily bottlenose dolphins and belugas today but previously orcas, as well) are also captured alive—sometimes in conjunction with hunts in which other members of the species are targeted for their meat—to supply to aquariums.

Since 1946, whaling (commercial and ASW) has, for the most part, been regulated globally by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) pursuant to a global treaty, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW). IWC management is concentrated on the great whales, setting quotas and other restrictions on hunting. Its conservation mandate, however, is broader than just the great whales, and the IWC’s Scientific and Scientific committees routinely address conservation issues relating to all cetaceans.

AWI opposes commercial whaling on welfare (among other) grounds and believes all whaling to be inherently cruel. Even the most advanced whale hunting methods cannot guarantee an instantaneous death or ensure that struck animals are rendered insensible to pain and distress before they die, which is the generally accepted standard for slaughter of domestic animals raised for food.

Commercial whalers use harpoons fired from the bow of a whaling vessel (often a fishing boat). The harpoons are usually fitted with penthrite grenades that are supposed to penetrate about 12 inches into the body before they explode, releasing claw-like protrusions into the flesh. Death is intended to come from the percussive force of the explosion delivered near the brain but, depending on where the harpoon hits the whale’s body, can come from trauma (shock) or blood loss. Given that whales are only visible for a short period when they surface to breathe, the brain area offers only a small, briefly accessible target for a gunner standing on a moving platform on a shifting sea, sometimes under difficult weather conditions.

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If the whale does not die instantaneously, a second harpoon grenade or rifle (depending on the size of the whale and the type of hunt) is typically used as a secondary killing method. After harpooning, the animal is hauled to the catcher vessel by a line attached to the embedded harpoon. For whales who have not been stunned or killed by then, the pain and distress during hauling must be excruciating. A proportion of struck whales are lost (e.g., if the harpoon line breaks due to heavy seas or other causes), only to die of their injuries or suffer lingering pain from the wound and infections.

Because of the difficulty of obtaining a clean, accurate strike or because of inadequately powered weapons, some whales can take minutes, sometimes even hours, to die, especially in ASW hunts. The IWC defines “humane killing” as death brought about “without pain, stress or distress perceptible to the animal. That is the ideal. Any humane killing technique aims first to render an animal insensitive to pain as swiftly as is technically possible, which in practice cannot be instantaneous in the scientific sense.”

The IWC has spent decades trying to reach consensus on criteria for determining the onset of death or irreversible insensibility. The current criteria, which the IWC agrees are inadequate, require the whaler to determine visually whether a whale displays relaxation of the lower jaw and no flipper movement, or sinks without active movement. Despite the IWC prioritizing this issue, it has not been possible for the whaling nations and countries that oppose whaling to reach agreement on new criteria.

The IWC’s work to improve whale killing methods depends on the willingness of the whaling nations to share data on whales’ time to death (TTD), the instantaneous death rate (IDR), and the number of whales struck and lost, and to respond to recommendations from other governments, nongovernmental organizations, and welfare or ballistic experts. Unfortunately, in recent years, two of the three remaining commercial whaling nations, Japan and Norway, have stopped sharing, or share inadequate, welfare data with the IWC.

The IWC has an ambitious program of work to improve the welfare of whales impacted by non-directed threats such as vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear and other marine debris.