WHALING AND SEALING

Hunting of whales has a long history in Japan and Europe. The Japanese trapped whales in coastal bays in the third century, while the Norwegians hunted whales in fjords in the ninth century and the Basques hunted whales in the Bay of Biscay in the eleventh century. The development of seaworthy vessels and reports from early exploration led to widespread whaling in the Arctic, North Atlantic and North Pacific. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch were the leading whaling nation and, by the nineteenth century, the Americans led a global-scale industry based on whale oil. Important technological advances included the adoption of steam-driven vessels and explosive harpoons in the AD 1880s. The first whaling in Antarctic waters occurred in 1904 and the invention of the first large, ocean-going factory ship occurred in 1925. These developments led to reductions in the stocks, especially of the largest baleen whales (blue, humpback and right whales), the 1931 Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, and eventually their endangered species status in the late twentieth century. In 1983, all commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), and in 1994, most of the Southern Ocean south of 40° S was declared a sanctuary for whales, from which all whaling is banned. Although populations of most species of large whales have recovered, continued international vigilance by the IWC and others is necessary to ensure that the Earth’s largest animals are not, once again, brought to the verge of extinction. However, Iceland, Japan and Norway still carry out so-called scientific whaling (whaling for scientific purposes).

Sealing has followed a similar pattern. Hunting for subsistence was followed by commercial exploitation of harp and fur seals for oil and fur. The first international convention for managing stocks of a marine organism (the North Pacific Seal Fur Convention, 1911) was established for the fur seals of the Pribilou Islands in the Bering Sea. Many species of seals are, however, like whales, in a depleted state.

[See alsofisheries conservation and management]