Future for Whales

• Published in: Oryx
• Main Author: Fitter, Richard
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1974
• Subjects: Nature and Landscape Conservation; Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics; Fin whale
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0030605300012540; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0030605300012540

Pie still remains in the sky as far as the hard-pressed fin whale is concerned, following the 26th meeting of the International Whaling Commission in London in June. But the sky has got perceptibly nearer. After the 1973 IWC meeting fin whaling stood to end in 1976; now it should end in 1975—provided the outcome of an Australian resolution is not denounced by Japan and Russia under the 90-day rule that makes the IWC so ineffective. The Australian resolution provided for a total moratorium on all protection stocks, defined as stocks whose annual increment does not maintain the population, so that the fin whale seems bound to be included. The other whales currently being hunted, the sei, minke and sperm whales, are still within the maximum sustainable yield, but there is every reason to fear that, if whaling continues, they too will have to be classed as protection stocks.