The Atlantic population had already been hunted to extinction, restricting the grey whale to shallow waters of the Pacific Ocean. At its peak in the 1950s, more than 50,000 whales were killed annually. Then, the international community stepped in. The two policies went hand in hand. Since their hunted years, the grey whale has made a dramatic comeback in the Eastern North Pacific, from a population of a few hundred to more than 20,000.
Grey whales are extinct in the North Atlantic and near-extinct in the Western North Pacific.
But Rolland Schmitten, deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S., says Japan's proposal must be analyzed within a larger context. We view this as a move toward commercial whaling. Japan and Norway have consistently ignored the IWC's moratorium on commercial whaling and repeatedly raised their whale quotas. Norwegian whalers have been caught trying to smuggle whale meat into Japan. Meanwhile, DNA tests have shown that whale meat from endangered species has been sold in Japan, including humpback whale from Mexican waters and blue whale from Icelandic waters.