page_title: Whaling
section_title: Sustainability
hierarchical_section_title: Whaling / Ongoing debate / Sustainability
caption_attribution_description: English: Whales Caught per Year Main source: Great whales: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276844456_Emptying_the_Oceans_A_Summary_of_Industrial_Whaling_Catches_in_the_20th_Century plus Belugas as cited in Beluga whale and Narwhals from https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/04/10/059691.full.pdf Français&#160;: Baleines Capturées par An Español: Ballenas Capturadas por Año
context_page_description: Whaling is the hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil which became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution.
  It was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16th century, it had risen to be the principal industry in the coastal regions of Spain and France. The industry spread throughout the world, and became increasingly profitable in terms of trade and resources. Some regions of the world's oceans, along the animals' migration routes, had a particularly dense whale population, and became the targets for large concentrations of whaling ships, and the industry continued to grow well into the 20th century. The depletion of some whale species to near extinction led to the banning of whaling in many countries by 1969, and to a worldwide cessation of whaling as an industry in the late 1980s.
  The earliest forms of whaling date to at least circa 3000 BC. Coastal communities around the world have long histories of subsistence use of cetaceans, by dolphin drive hunting and by harvesting drift whales.
context_section_description: The World Wide Fund for Nature says that 90% of all northern right whales killed by human activities are from ship collision, calling for restrictions on the movement of shipping in certain areas. Noise pollution threatens the existence of cetaceans. Large ships and boats make a tremendous amount of noise that falls into the same frequency range of many whales. By-catch also kills more animals than hunting. Some scientists believe pollution to be a factor. Moreover, since the IWC moratorium, there have been several instances of illegal whale hunting by IWC nations. In 1994, the IWC reported evidence from genetic testing of whale meat and blubber for sale on the open market in Japan in 1993. In addition to the legally permitted minke whale, the analyses showed that the 10–25% tissues sample came from non minke, baleen whales, neither of which were then allowed under IWC rules. Further research in 1995 and 1996 shows significant drop of non-minke baleen whales sample to 2.5%. In a separate paper, Baker stated that "many of these animals certainly represent a bycatch (incidental entrapment in fishing gear)" and stated that DNA monitoring of whale meat is required to adequately track whale products.
  It was revealed in 1994 that the Soviet Union had been systematically undercounting its catch. For example, from 1948 to 1973, the Soviet Union caught 48,477 humpback whales rather than the 2,710 it officially reported to the IWC. On the basis of this new information, the IWC stated that it would have to rewrite its catch figures for the last forty years. According to Ray Gambell, then Secretary of the IWC, the organization had raised its suspicions with the former Soviet Union, but it did not take further action because it could not interfere with national sovereignty.
caption: Whales Caught, by year, including corrected USSR totals; source has data by species
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