Why are whales still hunted today?
Last week, the International Whaling Commission (IWC), an intergovernmental organization founded in 1946 to regulate the commercial and scientific hunting of whales, held its 59th annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. Among its notable decisions was a resolution to uphold an indefinite moratorium on commercial whaling by IWC members that had been in effect since 1986. Although the vote was symbolically important, it will have no practical effect on the whale hunting now conducted by Japan, Norway, Iceland, and certain other countries. Since the moratorium was approved, Japan has continued to kill large numbers of whales each year under a provision of the IWC’s founding treaty, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), that allows member countries to issue permits to their nationals to kill whales for “scientific research.” Norway, meanwhile, has been legally entitled to continue commercial whale hunting because its objection on the grounds of national interest r
