The International Whaling Regime - Research Essay Assignment Help

Hunting of Whales in the Earlier Times:

The hunting of the whale dates back to the 12th century in which the hunting of black whales was conducted by the areas of North Atlantic. In 1864, explosives were used to hunt the whales. The technology used to hunt the whales could even kill the fastest fish in the sea, for example, the fin, sei and blue whales. In the 16th century, the species of whales were depleted and by the 17th century, Britishers and Dutch started to hunt whales along their coastlines. By the 20th century, the Pacific gray whales were hunted extensively and migrated to the North American Coast. The hunting operations were conducted using spears and harpoons that were replaced by shot guns and bomb lace guns by the end of the 19th century. Other ancient hunting techniques used by the hunters were the hand harpoons used by the Japanese hunters and a technique that involved nets that were used mostly for right, humpback and gray whales. The hunting of the whales expanded to the coastline of Antarctic. In 1904, the first harbor opened in South Georgia where the whales were fleeced. Furthermore, by 1925 the restriction for a land base was upheld and made it possible to pull the whales for processing on the exposed seas. After a mere five years, six sea stations were built, fourty one British and Norwegian factory boats and two hundred and thirty two whale hunters in the Antarctic. By 1961 and 1963 the total number of the whales hunted were sixty three thousand. The whale hunting has increased from 8863 whales in 1937 to the above-mentioned figure in 1962.

The International Whaling Regime:

The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling was established in 1946 that introduced the International Whaling Commission. Fifteen countries signed this convention, the main idea of this regime was to provide suitable preservation of whales and the regulation of the whaling industry. Then by the middle of the 1960s, the goal was changed to conserve the whale stocks around the world as there was an inclusion of new members in the commission. There are total eleven articles in this regime and compulsory for all the member countries to abide by them. In the early years of the 1970s, the Commission was made the main association of the regime that was seen as a platform for the nations to sort out all the conflicts between the nations that want to preserve the whale stocks and those who want to use the whale stocks for numerous reasons. As in the early years of the Convention, the main goal of the members was to regulate the industry for whale stocks, they agreed upon two clauses:

1. To protect the native whaling and;
2. Authorizing to take and kill the whale for scientific uses

However, the member nations disrupt the negotiations into two; the first was to permit the nations to conduct the whaling season from 1947 to 1948 and the second was the establishment of the Commission. The Convention allowed the members to hunt whale to a specific amount that was 16000 blue whales in 1944. Previously, all of the countries used to hunt whale before the introduction of the Commission however, currently, only seven countries now conduct whaling as other countries have a contradicting view on over fishing of the whales. Now the rest of the nations are working to reduce the hunting of whale for any purpose. This has been due to two reasons, firstly, the modernization of the regime and due to wide spread developments in other regimes, the focus is more on the preservation of the whales. Lastly, the pro whaling members want the treaty to go back to its former objectives. Now the members of the Commission are not on good terms as they were earlier and do not trust each other because some countries are conducting commercial whaling instead of whaling for scientific purposes. Another reason is that the pro whaling countries were promised that the moratorium would be lifted but anything isn’t done to lift it

Under the Commission many treaties were launched either by the USA or a group of countries. Some of the treaties are:

• The Pelly Amendment:

This Amendment was launched by the United States for their own country’s law and particularly impacted the decisions of the IWC. This was launched in 1971 and the main objective of this treaty is to impose a quota on the fish products that is being exported from the United States. Any president of United States hasn’t imposed any sanctions under Pelly Amendment, however, President Obama raised concerns for Iceland’s scientific certification in 2011 to the federal institutions and after that Iceland didn’t conduct whaling after 2011. 

• Packwood-Magnuson amendment:

This amendment was also launched by the United States was in accordance with Fishery Conservation and Management Act in 1979. According to this act the secretary of commerce was ordered to reduce fifty percent of the fishing rights in America’s waters and if any country violated it had to bear the consequences. For example, during Reagan’s government Japan was denied of the privilege to whale under the America’s exclusive economic zone.

• North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO):

According to many authors NAMMCO is a regional tactic to preserve whales in the North Atlantic area. The NAMMCO was launched in 1992 and is quite a small regime than International Whaling Commission. This institution is more successful than the Commission and the members of this Regime take advices from the marine scientists to conserve the population of the mammals. The International Whaling Commission should look into the model of the NAMMCO and should follow some guidelines of it. Much work has been done to stop the members from whaling extensively. Iceland rejoined International Whaling Commission after NAMMCO was strict in its guidelines.