Whaling Commission Renews Most Aboriginal Hunting Quotas

John Roach
for National Geographic News

May 30, 2007

An international whaling body agreed Tuesday to allow aboriginal groups in the U.S., Russia, and the Caribbean to continue their whale-hunting traditions for at least five more years.

But the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which is meeting this week in Anchorage, Alaska, is deadlocked over a proposed expansion of the aboriginal hunt in Greenland.

IWC has acknowledged the right of aboriginal groups to hunt whales since the whaling body's creation in 1946. Quotas are awarded for five-year periods.

The hunts allow aboriginal groups to maintain centuries-long traditions of killing whales to meet cultural and subsistence needs and are largely unopposed by most government and activist groups.

"[The quotas have] always specifically been to meet subsistence needs, and it's always specifically been for aboriginal people to use," said Sue Fisher, U.S. policy director and whaling campaigner for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

But Greenland's bid to increase its take of minke whales by 25 and to include 10 humpback and 2 bowhead whales for the first time is worrying, Fisher noted.

The Danish territory's delegates to the IWC meeting said the increase, which would raise the allowable catch to 740 tons of whale meat from 540 tons, is needed to supply growing demand.

Antiwhaling groups, however, say feeding demand beyond local subsistence needs amounts to a commercial hunt, which is regulated separately by the whaling body.

Fisher said 17 percent of the minke whale meat caught by Inuit hunters in Greenland is sold to a state-owned company that processes, packages, and sells the meat to supermarkets.

"IWC doesn't acknowledge that as a use of the subsistence whaling category," she said.

"That's commercialization, which is why the Greenland quota [is] pretty controversial."

The commercialization, she added, may be generating more interest in whale meat, which in turn is driving Greenland's request.

Quotas Approved

Extensions of the aboriginal whale hunts in the U.S., Russia, and the Caribbean country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines were granted by consensus vote Tuesday.

Native peoples in Alaska and Russia were allocated a shared catch of up to 280 bowhead whales to be taken between now and 2012.

The Bequians of St. Vincent and the Grenadines can take up to 20 humpback whales during the same period.

Russian Inuit also received approval to take up to 140 gray whales a year, 5 of which are shared with the Makah in Washington State, whose hunt is currently held up in court.

Greenland's request is expected to be taken up again later this week, and observers believe a compromise that allows for some of the proposed expansion but not all is likely.

These approvals are the only IWC-sanctioned exceptions to a moratorium on commercial hunts the whaling body enacted in 1986.

Japan, Iceland, and Norway use exceptions to the ban, such as allowances for scientific research, to routinely kill about 2,000 whales each year. The meat is then allowed to be commercially sold. (Related: "Iceland Breaks Whale Hunt Ban, Kills Fin Whale" [October 23, 2006].)

Subsistence Harvest

George Pletnikoff is an Aleut—a Native American culture that lives in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska—as well as an oceans campaigner for the activist group Greenpeace.

He said Greenpeace, which is well known for its efforts to stop commercial and scientific whale hunts, neither supports nor opposes aboriginal subsistence hunts.

"We recognize the rights of indigenous people to harvest their traditional foods in a sustainable and customary fashion," he said.

Such aboriginal harvests, he added, are "a world of difference" from commercial hunts.

The Inupiat harvest, for example, provides food for the community and upholds vital cultural, spiritual, and physical activities.

He also noted that the harvests are sustainable, unlike those of most commercial practices.

One of the hang-ups for Greenland's bid, in fact, is an IWC scientific committee that evaluates the status of each population the aboriginal groups hunt.

The committee can only recommend the additional minke and bowhead harvest for one year and lacks enough data to make a recommendation on the humpback request. (Related: "Whale Birth Decline Tied to Global Warming, Study Says" [January 18, 2006].)

"The commission could in theory choose to ignore [the committee's advice], but it shouldn't," said Fisher, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. "That's the point of having the committee."

Humane Hunt?

How the aboriginal groups kill whales is also a tricky issue a special IWC committee discusses each year, Fisher added.

Factors used to determine humaneness are how long it takes a whale to die once struck with a harpoon or shot with a rifle and the number of whales struck but not killed.

While there is no standard for whale kills, Fisher said Norwegians share their modern harpooning technology with Greenland's Inuit population.

Alaskan natives share their harpooning technology with their Russian counterparts, who often use automatic weapons.

"So there are efforts to improve the humaneness of the hunt," Fisher said, "and they could all go a lot further in my view without losing the integrity of the cultural tradition."

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