Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00930:reg:2:p3
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00930
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 2 (pt 3/48)
Character Range: 70413–73395

and Japanese ships in both Fremantle Harbour and Sydney Harbour (Kato 2015). During the mid-20th century, shore-based whaling operated around Australia with major stations in Albany (WA), Byron Bay (NSW), Eden (NSW) and Tangalooma (QLD), for which the industry was seen to bring modernisation, employment, and new amenities to many parts of Australia. With the end of whaling in Australia in 1978, whaling stopped being an economic issue and became an environmental one, and Australia made a rapid transition to an anti-whaling nation (Suter 1982, Kato 2015). From the 1970's some nations passed laws protecting whales and dolphins (e.g., United States Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972 and United Kingdom Wildlife and Countryside Act in 1981). Australia established the EPBC Act in 1999 in recognition of the extreme exploitation many species underwent and their consequential threatened conservation status, the significant roles cetaceans play in ecosystems, their cognitive abilities, and the complex social societies in which they live (Allen 2014).
Many people today value whales as unique living resources that play an important role in their aquatic ecosystems. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) investigated the economic benefits whales provide to industries such as ecotourism, as well as the environmental benefits they may have as ecosystem engineers through carbon sequestration. The IMF found one great whale is potentially worth approximately $2 million, and the global great whale population approximately $1 trillion (Chami et al. 2019). For most Australians, the value placed on whales is reflected in economic terms through development of ecotourism associated with whale watching. Commercial sustainable whale watching operators form an important nature-based industry that attracts a large number of tourists to coastal towns, providing important income to coastal regions in Australia, as well as promoting the conservation of whales and dolphins (O'Connor et al. 2009).

2.3         Historical whaling
Right whales were a primary target of whalers globally from the mid-16th century to late 20th century (Reeves & Smith 2003). Southern right whales were targeted for commercial hunting between 1790 and 1970, with at least 150,000 killed globally (Jackson et al. 2008). It was estimated that prior to whaling there were approximately 120,000 individuals in the Southern Hemisphere breeding grounds, although by 1920 there may have been as few as 300 remaining (IWC 2001). Despite international agreement in 1935 to protect southern right whales, the Soviet Union illegally hunted them in the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviet Union are believed to have illegally taken at least 3,300 southern right whales in the Southern Hemisphere at this time, removing more than half of whales existing at the time of protection (Tormosov et al. 1998).
In Australia, whaling became an important industry in the early 19th century following European colonisation, with the