Whale hunting or whaling is hunting whales for commercial use, to get oil, food, or be used for scientific studies. Whaling has been going on for thousands of years, originally whales where killed for food but more recently they have been hunted for more industrial purposes like the liver for oil or using whale teeth for buttons and jewellery. Whale oil is even can even be used for alcohol, soap and even lipstick.
After World War 2, Japan had a shortage of food so used whale as rations.. Whales had not been killed during the war so numbers were high.There are a few good things about whaling for example food, soap and alcohol (as mentioned in paragraph one) but there are also many bad things that come from it. In the 1930 50, 000 whales were killed and by 1950 stocks of whales where not being replenished.
In 1986 the IWC banned whaling so that there would be more whales in the world. Despite the ban three countries continued to kill whales using loopholes in the agreement: Japan used a loophole allowing scientific whaling under special permit. Japan still undertakes two whaling expeditions on six different species each year. Norway officially objected and continue to allocate itself quotas for hunting Minke whales. Iceland, which initially had accepted the moratorium left the IWC in 1992 rejoining in 2002 with a legally questionable reservation to the moratorium.
Now 2000 whales are killed in Japan, Norway and Iceland. Only 5% of the Japanese population eat whale meat but the amount of whale hunted is not going down. Furthermore, whaling expeditions in Japan actually make large loses. With the average whaling costing 5 billion yen, the amount of whale meat sold adds up to nowhere in the region of 5 billion yen. This shows that there is something else driving people to kill innocent whales. If not the money what is it.
Commercial whalingThe Moratorium was a turning point for whales. It brought an end to the years of hunting and selling of whale meat and products. Norway resumed commercial whaling under objection to the Moratorium in 1993 to 1994. It has also engaged in scientific whaling. Iceland is now one of the most outspoken countries of commercial whaling with a confident campaign to allow international trade in fin and minke whale products.
Scientific WhalingScientific whaling is Special Permit Whaling. It is one of the IWC? ?oop holesand is used as an excuse to hunt whales in Japan. The IWC described it as act contrary to the spirit of the moratorium on commercial whaling and to the will of the commission.The amount of whaling in the Northwest Pacific risk the extinction of the endangered Minke whale population.
Native Whaling The IWC has recognized the longstanding cultural and nutritional needs of certain indigenous people in the Arctic to hunt whales for survival. This is why the Moratorium does not apply to these such groups and the IWC has continued to allocate quotas for the locals to hunt the whales. Although Greenland rarely takes its full quota of minke and fin whales, it claims to need more whale meat to fulfil domestic needs.
