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Whaling

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Frenchman pose with a catch.

Whaling is the hunting and killing of whales. Historically, poor conservation management by many nations led to far more whales being killed than could be sustained and to near extinction in several species.

International cooperation on whaling regulation started in 1931 and a number of bi- and multi-lateral agreements exist in this area, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) of 1946 being the most important.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was founded by the ICRW for the purpose of giving management advice to the member nations on the basis of the work of the Scientific Committee.

IWC decided in 1982 to pause commercial whaling on all whale stocks beginning in 1985/86. Since the decision was not based on advice from the Scientific Committee, it is not binding for member states that protest on the basis of article V no.3 in the ICRW. Nations that protested the decision have continued whale hunts, despite the moratorium.

Since 1992, the IWC Scientific Committee has requested the IWC to give quota proposals for some whale stocks, but this has so far been refused by IWC.

The history of whaling

Pre-historic to medival times

Humans have engaged in whaling since pre-historic times. The oldest known method of catching whales is to simply drive them ashore by placing a number of small boats between the whale and the open sea and attempting to frighten them with noise, activity, and perhaps small, non-lethal weapons such as arrows. Typically, this was used for small species, such as Pilot Whales, Belugas and Narwhals.

The next step was to employ a drogue: a floating object such as a wooden drum or an inflated sealskin which was tied to an arrow or a harpoon, in the hope that, after a time, the whale would tire enough to be approached and killed. Several cultures around the world practiced whaling with drogues, including the Inuit, Native Americans, and the Basque people of the Bay of Biscay.

The Basque fishery

By medieval times, the Basque fishery had become a significant industry, with whale meat and blubber exported to many parts of Europe. The operation was strictly coastal: watchmen manned lookout towers and when whales were sighted, rang a bell to alert the boat crews. When a whale was killed, it was towed ashore for cutting up and processing.

The type of whale sought was at that time abundant in the North Atlantic and particularly in the Bay of Biscay: the right whale—named because it was the "right" whale to hunt. It was, at least by comparison with other whales, easy to kill, non-aggressive, rich in both baleen and oil, and above all, the carcass often floated. (The particular right whale hunted was the one now known as the Atlantic Northern Right Whale.)

Eventually, during or before the 16th century, Basque whalemen tired of the low success rate of the drogue method (many a harpooned whale would simply swim off into the distance and never be seen again) and adopted the fast-fish method: using the entire whaleboat as a drogue. The technique evolved a great deal over the centuries and varied in detail from one whaling nation to another, but essentially involved having a very long line in the boat that could be paid out as the whale sounded and hauled back in as it neared the surface. After making repeated attempts to escape, the exhausted whale could be killed.

This was considerably more dangerous than the drogue method but resulted in a higher proportion of successful attempts—something that was becoming a necessity at the time, because although the Basque fishery was tiny by comparison with those of later years, right whales were becoming rare near the coasts of Europe. As early as 1372, Basque ships were crossing almost to the other side of the North Atlantic to whale on the Grand Banks near Newfoundland. By the late 16th century, right whales were almost exterminated in the eastern North Atlantic and Basque, Norwegian and Icelandic whalers were traveling as far afield as the Gulf of St Lawrence and to the edges of the Greenland ice-pack.

The Atlantic Arctic fishery

"Dangers of the whale fishery"

With the Atlantic Northern Right Whale nearing commercial extinction in the early 17th century, news came from fur traders sailing to Archangel of vast numbers of another type of right whale far to the north. Originally known as the Greenland Right Whale, it is better known now by the name given to it by American whalers in later years, the Bowhead Whale. The initial rush to the "Northern Goldfield" started with an Englsh company in 1611 and centered on the waters near Spitzbergen. A five-way international struggle soon developed over whaling rights: there were armed clashes between whaling crews and naval vessels were sent to provide extra firepower. In 1618, the English fleet was so embroiled in the struggle against other whalers that it returned from Spitzbergen without having caught a single whale.

A compromise peace was negotiated shortly aftwards, and for the next 30 years whalers of many nations conducted the "Bay Fishery". Bowhead Whales were present in such numbers that there was no need to leave the coastal waters in search of them. Whalers sailed to Spitzbergen, anchored, and set up temporary processing stations on the shore for the summer season. Fleets of three or four small, open boats called shallops would work together to catch and kill a whale, then tow it ashore for flensing (cutting the blubber into long strips) ready to be boiled down into oil, which was stored in wooden casks.

Semi-permananent shore stations were established and, for the 30-odd years that the boom lasted, the Dutch whaling settlement of Smeerenburg north-west of Spitzbergen hosted hundreds of whaling ships each year. By 1645, the coastal whales had been exterminated and Smeerenburg was deserted. The hunt for Bowhead Whales continued on the open seas.

Gradually, whaling ships became more self-sufficient. Flensing took place on any nearby shore, then on ice-floes (it became the custom to moor the ship to a large ice-floe and drift south with it for the season) and eventually on the open seas with the carcasses tied to the side of the ship. Different nations adopted different methods: most packed the blubber into casks to be boiled down ashore; the Basques (and a hundred years later the Americans) preferred to risk the perils of fire on a wooden boat to boil down their oil while at sea.

As Bowhead Whales became scarce in the North Atlantic, operations shifted to ever more difficult areas. The Davis Strait (between Newfoundland and Greenland) was fished out, and whalers penetrated into Baffin Bay, then still further north-east past the Melville Bay ice-pack into what was known as the North Water. Ships were lost in the ice every year, many ships in bad years. In 1830, of the 91 British ships to enter Davis Straits, 19 were lost.

The few remaining Atlantic Bowhead Whales became prohibitively expensive to hunt. By the early 20th century, there were only a handful of ships left whaling in the North Atlantic, and although whalebone could be sold for £3500 a ton, there was little to be had. In 1910, for example, 10 Scottish whalers sailed for the Arctic but between then returned with 18 Pilot Wales, 389 Belugas, 1697 Walruses, 4549 seals, 242 Polar Bears, and no Bowhead Whales at all.

When the First World War broke out, the fishery was abandoned completely.

The Pacific Arctic fishery

American whalers were active participants in the hunt for Right and Bowhead Whales in the North Atlantic and the Arctic through the 18th and 19th centuries, and as Atlantic stocks dwindled, whalemen from the United Stated switched their attention to the North Pacific. Here, the Pacific Northern Right Whale—a species very nearly identical to the familiar but now scarce Atlantic Northern Right Whale—was as-yet unexploited.

As had been the case in the Atlantic, stocks in the more readily accessible areas were soon depleted, and in 1848 the first of many American whalers pushed north through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean. Bowhead Whales were plentiful, and during the 1870s the American Arctic fishery became the largest in the world. It was a short-lived boom, however, as the Pacific Arctic was fished out within just a few decades.

The Sperm Whale fishery

Jonah Sperm Oil, an old label
Jonah Sperm Oil, an old label

Along the eastern seaboard of the United States, a relatively small-scale shore-based whaling industry was well established by the middle of the 17th century, mostly using the drogue method, and hunting both Right and Humpback whales. Humpbacks usually sink after death, but are placid and easy to approach. They were usually taken close inshore and buoyed: after a few days, decomposition gasses would bring the carcass to the surface, from where it could be towed onto a beach and cut up at low tide.

The coastal fishery slowly dwindled as inshore stocks were exhausted. The inefficient drogue method (which had allowed many whales to escape, usually to die afterwards) was gradually abandoned in favour of the efficient but more dangerous fast fish method. By the middle years of the 18th century, the coastal fishery had drawn to a close. In the meantime, however, New England whalers had discovered how to catch the Sperm Whale—a species previously considered impossible to hunt.

In 1700 a Sperm Whale was stranded at Nantucket and when boiled down by the villagers, proved to yield very high quality oil. In 1712 a small Nantucket whaler, blown off-course in a gale, chanced upon a Sperm Whale and succeeded not only in killing it, but also in towing the carcass back to shore. Within a few years, deep-sea whalers were operating from several New England ports to hunt Sperm Whales.

Initially, the blubber was cut into blocks and stored in barrels to be boiled down at shore stations, but this soon proved impractical as, unlike the baleen whales, Sperm Whales are mainly found in tropical and temperate waters, where decomposition is rapid. In consequence, as ships grew bigger and voyages longer, the New England whalers constructed brick tryworks on the decks: pairs of large copper vats, fueled by blubber scrap fires and cooled by a tray of sea water underneath to prevent the deck catching alight. The oil was drawn off into barrels; the spermaceti and ambergris (if any) stored separately, and the remainder of the carcass cut loose to be eaten by sharks.

American whalers introduced several other innovations, including the cutting-in stage (a wooden platform that could be lowered beside the ship to aid in flensing on the high seas), and a lighter, double-ended whaleboat with a complicated and dangerous pulley system running down its length, which allowed the entire crew to grasp the whaleline when hauling in a tiring but still active Sperm Whale.

The American whaling industry boomed. Despite the near-total destruction of the fleet by the American War of Independence and the War of 1812, in 1846 it reached its peak with no less than 732 ships, most of them engaged in the Sperm Whale fishery. Other countries followed suit and as early as 1788 a British whaler rounded Cape Horn, entering the Pacific Ocean and extending the Sperm Whale hunt to the South Seas. The American fleet began to follow in 1791—the first being the Beaver of Nantucket (the same ship that had previously been involved with the Boston Tea Party).

As the Sperm Whales of the Atlantic were fished out, the Pacific became increasingly important to the industry, and voyages of two and even four years became routine. (It was said, not entirely in jest, that a Southseasman did not bother to say goodbye to his family if embarking on a mere transatlatic voyage.) For the newly-settled English colonies of Australia and New Zealand, the proximity of the southern whaling grounds provided the first real export industry.

Three events brought the Sperm Whale fishery to a close. First, even the vast Pacific Ocean was becoming fished out. Second came the American Civil War and a third wholesale destruction of the United States whaling fleet. Finally, there came the discovery of petroleum in 1859, which over next few decades began to push the price of whale oil down. The American industry gradually faded away, the long-established New England ports giving way to San Francisco and Honolulu, and most whalers spending the northern summer in the Pacific Arctic hunting Bowheads, and the Austral summer in the south Pacific. By the end of the century, low oil prices and scarce whales had brought the Sperm Whale fishery to a close.

The rorqual fishery

Up until the later years of the 19th century, rorquals were never hunted. Despite the obvious attractions—rorquals were plentiful in many waters, and offered vast quantities of both whalebone and blubber—they were simply too dangerous and difficult to handle. Until this time, the only rorqual fishery of any note had been the short-lived and strictly shore-based taking of the relatively small Humpback Whale off the coast of New England.

A gun for killing whales was not a new idea. Guns had been fitted into the bows of whaleboats as far back as 1732, but never become popular, mainly because it was too difficult to aim them accurately from a small boat on a rough sea, but also because it formed an obstruction in the bows of the boat, and because the noise of it scared other whales away. The steam-driven whaler was not a new idea either: these had become common in the dying days of the North Atlantic fishery, and had allowed whalemen to venture further into the northern ice packs in search of the last few Bowhead Whales than had been possible with sail and oars. The explosive head was also an old idea. Two variants, the bomb-lance and the darting-gun were in common use in the Arctic fishery, particulary when hunting small, fairly easily-killed species such as pilot and the bottlenose whales.

The combination of these three well-known technologies, however, was new when, in 1865, Svend Foyn of Norway mounted a harpoon-gun with an explosive head in the bows of a small, steam-driven whaler, with the intention of hunting the only whales that were still common in Scananavian waters, the rorquals.

To begin with, the steam catchers were underpowered (they still relied on sail for most purposes), small enough to have great difficulty in hauling in a large Blue or Fin Whale, and they operated from shore stations. It took about 20 years for the innovation to become widespread.

In previous times, the commercial exploitation of whales was a major business, supporting large fleets engaged in their pursuit. In the heyday of whaling during the 19th and early 20th centuries, large species such as the Humpback Whale and Blue Whale were the primary targets. Whaling ships often spent years at sea with little or no contact with the rest of humanity. Whales were primarily hunted for the oil contained in their bodies. Some species, once abundant, were killed in numbers reaching tens of thousands annually, and approached extinction. By the mid-20th century, with the depletion of the stocks, the declining market for whale oil, and general public disapprobation of the hunting of rare species, commercial whaling decreased to the point where the industry nearly vanished.

The subject of whaling is central to the novel Moby Dick by the American novelist Herman Melville.

Modern Whaling

Whaling is regulated by the International Whaling Commission, set up in 1946 by the United Nations International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. On July 23, 1982 the International Whaling Commission decided to end commercial whaling by 1985-86. Although whale oil has little commercial value today, whale meat has come to be considered a delicacy, particularly in Japan.

The primary species hunted today is the Minke Whale, the smallest of the baleen whales. Recent scientific surveys estimate a population of 180,000 in the central and North East Atlantic and 700,000 around Antarctica. The IWC has recently ( 2003 ) began a multi-year survey in Antarctic waters to update current population estimates and Norway has been conducting multi-year surveys each year since 1995 as required by their membership of the IWC. Some researchers have suggested that this species is endangering fish populations. This has lead for calls that the International Whaling Commission revise its regulations to give greater emphasis to species-by-species analysis rather than treating all whales as a monolithic group. Other researchers reject the notion the fish populations are highly sensitive to very slowly increasing whale populations.

Norway

Norway is the only country to have registered an objection to the International Whaling Commission moratorium, and is thus not bound by it. In 1993 Norway resumed an openly commercial catch, following a period of five years where a small catch was made, justified by the Norwegian industry as for scientific purposes. The catch is made solely from the North-east Atlantic Minke Whale population, which is estimated to consist of about 110,000 animals. The number of whales caught by Norwegian whalers has been growing steadily in recent years:

1993 226
1994 280
1995 218
1996 388
1997 503
1998 625
1999 589
2000 487
2001 552 (Quota 549)
2002 634 (Quota 671)
2003 670 (Quota 711)
2004 (Quota 670)

(Sources: Most sources quote the High North Alliance, a pro-whaling lobby operated by Norwegian whalers. Quotas are set by the Norwegian government).

Prior to the morartorium, Norway caught around 2,000 Minkes per year. The North Atlantic hunt is divided into five areas and lasted from early May to late August. Norway exports a limited amount of whale meat to the Faroes and Iceland. It has been attempting to export to Japan for several years, though this has been hampered by legal protests and concerns in the Japanese domestic market about the effects of pollution on Atlantic whales.

Those opposed to whaling say that this export is a violation of the spirit of the IWC morartorium, which the High North Alliance says it adhers to. Commenting in June 2003, British fisheries minister Elliot Morley said "We believe the Norwegian whaling is against the spirit of the moratorium. They say it's legal, and it's true they registered an objection when the moratorium was agreed by the commission, so under IWC rules they're allowed to continue hunting. But we think it goes against the spirit of the ban, and certainly their attempts to export the meat are illegal. They're desperate to find an export market, and that shows the whaling isn't for domestic consumption - and it's not sustainable."

In May 2004 the Norwegian Parliament passed a resolution to increase considerably the number of Minkes hunted each up - upto 1,800 animals per year by 2006. The move would have to be agreed to the fisheries ministry that sets the quota. The fisheries ministry also proposed a satellite tracking programme to monitor numbers of other species as possible prelude to resuming hunting of them. Commenting on this proposal Rune Frovik of the High North Alliance said "The proposal appears to apply in principle to virtually any species except Bowheads and Blue Whales, though in practice I think the government is most interested in assessing stocks of Fins, Humpbacks, pilot whales and several dolphins."

References: BBC report on Norwegian Parliament proposals

Japan

Japan also carries out whaling operations under IWC's sientific research provision. Anti whaling lobby accuse Japan of carrying out commercial whaling under guise of science. The research is conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Cetacean Research. The institute is privately-owned but non-profit. The institute receives its funding from whaling company Kyodo Senpaku and from government subsidies. Kyodo Senpaku was formed in 1987 (formerly Kyodo Hogei, since 1976) and is a consolidation of earlier whaling departments of Japanese fisheries. Kyodo Senpaku is a for-profit company that conducts the collection, processing and selling wholesale of the whale specimens for the research institute. It sells roughly US$60 million worth of whale products each year. It is a requirement of IWC membership to sell any meat taken from research catches.

Iceland

Iceland has a long tradition of subsistence whaling. Indeed whaling of one form or another has been conducted from the island since it became populated more than eleven hundred years ago. The early reliance of whales is reflected in the Icelandic language - hvalreki is the word for both "beached whale" and "jackpot".

Iceland allowed Norwegian whalers to set up thirteen whaling stations around the island in 1883. By 1915, 17,000 whales had been taken from Icelandic waters, eradicating Northern Right Whales and Gray Whales in the area. The Icelandic Government banned whaling in its waters to allow time for population recovery. The law was repealed in 1928.

By 1935 Icelanders had set up their own commercial whaling operation for the first time. They hunted mostly Sei, Fin and Minke Whales. In the early years of this operation Blue, Sperm and Humpback Whales were also hunted, but this was soon prohibited due to decimated numbers. Between 1935 and 1985 Icelandic whalers killed around 20,000 animals in total.

Unlike Norway, Iceland did not protest against the IWC morartorium and was thus limited to whaling conducted under the name of scientific research. Between 1986 and 1989 around 60 animals per year were taken. However under strong pressure from the international community, not convinced that the kills were truly for scientific purposes (particularly because the meat was sold to Japan) Iceland ceased whaling altogether in 1989. Following the 1991 refusal of the IWC to accept its Scientific Committees recommendation to allow limited whaling, Iceland left the IWC.

With significant support from its people, Iceland rejoined the IWC in 2002. This allowed it to restart a programme of whaling in the late summer of 2003. Although the programme is, like the Japanese programme, formally classified as for scientific purposes, few accept that this is a realistic representation of Icelandic whaling. The research will primarily consist of measuring fish stocks in the area from which whales have been removed and the strongest advocates for a resumed hunt are fisherman concerned that whales are taking too many fish. The hunt was supported by three-quarters of the Icelandic population. By the end of the hunting season, Iceland had taken 36 Minkes from a quota of 38. More whales are expected to be taken in subsequent years; this years take being called a "feasibility study" by pro-whalers. In 2004 the hunting is to be extended to include the spring and early summer and around 100 whales will be caught.

Aboriginal groups

Several countries, most notably the United States, Russia, and Greenland, allow aboriginal groups to hunt whales if they have traditionally done so. The IWC provisions for subsistence whaling specifically prohibits commercial ventures. However these provisions are ignored by the Greenland hunt (about 50 animals annually), where whalers do distribute a proportion their product through commercial channels and it is possible to purchase whale meat at local markets and in small shops in Greenland. Export of whale products has not been attempted.

Provisions for aboriginal groups also allow the limited hunt of endangered species such as the Bowhead Whale. Canadian groups are licensed by the Canadian government (Canada is not a member of the IWC) to take approximately one Bowhead Whale every two years. The Russian population in Chukotka in eastern Siberia was allowed one such whale by the IWC in 1999, but the Russian government increased the permitted take two.

The majority of animals taken by the Canadian hunt are either beluga or narwhal.

The Japanese Minke Whale hunt in the Antarctic and the Inuit ( aboriginal ) whale hunt provide approximately the same amount of whale products ( mainly meat and blubber ) to the whalers.

Caribbean

Some whaling is conducting from Grenada, Dominica and Saint Lucia. Species hunted are the Short-finned Pilot Whale, Pygmy Killer Whale and Spinner Dolphins. Throughout the Caribbean, around 400 Pilot Whales are killed annually. The meat is sold locally.

Limited numbers of Humpback Whales are hunted by whalers from St. Vincent and Grenadine.

Faroe Islands

Origins

Around one thousand Long-finned Pilot Whales are killed in the annual whale drive (or "grind") by the Faroese fishermen each year. The drive works by surrounding the whales with a wide semi-circle of boats and slowly coaxing (or driving) them into a bay and then onto beach. The drive has been practiced since the tenth century and records exist in part since 1584, and continuously from 1709 - the longest period of time for statistics exist of any wild animal hunt in the world. The drive remains highly controversial as environmentalists say that the drive is unacceptably cruel. Such is the importance of the drive in Faroese culture that the Faroese word for sighting a group of whales is the same as that as for the grind.

A threat to the whale population?

Debate rages about the whether the hunt represents a significant threat to Pilot Whale populations. The size of the North-east Atlantic population itself is a subject of debate. The figure accepted by the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee is the 778,000 animals obtained by the North Atlantic Sightings Survey in 1995. Those in favour of whaling, such as the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) in their 1997 and 1999 report on the hunt (available in PDF here), say that this is a conservative estimate whilst those opposed to the hunt, such as the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society say it is an over-estimate. If the estimate is accepted, the average kill of the last ten years (950 animals per year), then the cull represents little more than 0.1% of the population, which scientists say is sustainable.

As the long-term records indicate that the number of whales caught in each year has remained relatively stable for such a long-time, the whaling community say that the global population must have remained fairly steady. Those opposed to the whaling disagree ; saying that the technology used to capture the hunt has improved (motor boats instead of rowing boats, and telescopes to see the animals from a further distance) and thus a greater proportion of animals can be driven with the same manpower.

The killing process

Because the Pilot Whales are killed on the beach by cutting their main arteries, the surrounding sea tends to turn a spectacular bloody red. Anti-whaling campaigners are quick to use this vivid imagery to argue that the drive is cruel.

Once the whales have been driven close to the shore of a bay by boats forming a semi-circle behind them, the whaling foreman drops a rope into the water weighted by stones. With this, the whales are forced onto the beach. It is not permitted to take whales on the ocean-side of this rope. Most of the whales beach themselves. Those that remain unbeached have historically been stabbed in the blubber with a sharp hook, called a gaff, and then pulled to the shore. Responding to allegations of cruelty, the whalers have begun using blunt gaffs and, instead of stabbing the whale, putting the hook inside the blow-hole of the whale. Anti-whaling groups such as Greenpeace and the WDCS have not been satisfied with this solution either saying that the partial blocking and irritation of the airway causes pain and panic in the animal.

Once ashore the Pilot While is killed by cutting the dorsal area through to the spinal cord. The length of time it takes an animal to die is also the subject of much debate. The High North Alliance says that the time taken to kill is less than two minutes. The WDCS says that this period may considerably lengthier if the whaler is not expert, for instance if he does not cut deeply enough.

Health issues

Because whales occupy a high trophic level (i.e. are high in the food chain) mercury and chemical pollutants such as PCBs tend to accumulate in their bodies. Although scientists do not yet fully understand what danger this represents either the whales themselves or to people eating the whales, the Faroese Health Authority has issued advice saying that no-one should whale meat more than twice per month and that pregnant should consider avoid eating it all together because of the believed increased risk of mis-carriage.

References for the Faroese drive

Arguments for whaling

  • Some species of whale is no longer endengered.
  • Produces meat without holding animals captive. (Captivity is generally only regarded as a problem in overindustrialized farming.)
  • A larger amount of meat is produced per animal life taken, than with any other animal.
  • Whaling is an ancient tradition in some indigenous cultures, and it's argued that one should not interfere with that. (Dispensations are generally given for cases like this.)
  • Whaling is a livelihood for some people and some companies.
  • There is no conclusive evidence to suggest that whale is any more intelligent than other mammals such as as pigs which are consumed widely.
  • Whaling is an essential condition for some commercial fisheries, like the cod-capelin system in the Barents Sea. Annually Minke Whales roughly eats 10 kg fish meat per kg, which puts a heavy predation pressure on commercial species directly or indirectly. Critics of whalers point out that if, as the whalers claim, whaling only takes a tiny fraction of the whale population, then this reduces only a by a similarly tiny amount the number of fish eaten each year. Such environmentalists blame depleted fish stocks on human overfishing.

Arguments against whaling

  • Some species of whale are close to extinction.
  • Harpooning is considered cruel by many people. In March 2004, Whalewatch, an umbrella group of 140 conservation and animal welfare groups from 55 countries published a report, Troubled Waters, whose main conclusion was that whales cannot be guaranteed to be killed humanely and that all whaling should be stopped. They quoted figures that said 20% of Norwegian- and 60% of Japanese-killed whales failed to die as soon as they had been harpooned. John Opdahl of the Norwegian embassy in London, responded by saying that Norwegian authorities worked with the IWC to develop the most humane killing methods. He said that the average time taken for a whale to die having been shot was the same as or less as those animals killed by big game hunters on safari. Troubled Waters is available here in PDF format.
  • Whales are amongst the most intelligent of the non-human animals. This issue has also raised considerable debate. See cetacean intelligence.
  • Many researchers say that the whales that are killed are those that are most curious about boats and thus the easiest to approach and kill. However these individuals are also the most valuable to the whale-watching industry, as these "friendly" whales easiest means of providing an experience to their customers. The argument over whether whales are worth more dead than alive is complex and finished. Naturally the whale-watching industry, and those opposed to whaling on moral grounds, claim that once all benefits to local economies such as hotels, restaurants and other tourist amenities are factored in, and the fact that a whale can only be killed once but watched many times, the economic balance weighs firmly down on the side of not hunting whales. Conversely whalers reject this, saying that tourism benefits have been over-stated and that the cost of whales eating fish not properly included. This economic argument is a particular bone of contention in Iceland, which has amongst the most-developed whale-watching operations in the world and where hunting of Minke Whales began again in August 2003.

References

See also

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