Stop Commercial Whaling

There is no humane way to kill whales at sea. Whalers use explosive-tipped harpoons, fired from moving ships at moving, submerged targets.  Many whales do not die instantly—some endure prolonged suffering, taking over an hour to die after multiple harpoon strikes. Even when harpoons detonate inside the whale’s body, causing catastrophic internal injuries, some whales break free, only to die slowly and agonizingly in the ocean.

This brutal practice is unnecessary in a world where responsible eco-tourism and ocean conservation offer sustainable alternatives.

Japan withdrew from  the International Whaling Commission, which maintains its ban on such activities, in 2019 and resumed commercial whaling (abandoning its claim that its whaling was for research). During the moratorium, Japan continued whaling under of the guise of scientific research. It is now conducting non-IWC-sanctioned commercial whaling    and acting outside of international law.

Japan is also among a number  of countries and territories that also hunt small whales and dolphins. Japan’s dolphin hunt in the town of Taiji has become infamous because of its cruelty and links to the captivity industry. Similarly, the Faroe Islands’ annual drive hunts  kill entire groups of small whales and dolphins, including hundreds of pilot whales, for their meat each summer. Notably, however, most Faroese people do not participate in the hunts or eat whale meat.

Whaling is unsustainable—whales are long-lived, slow to reproduce, and difficult and expensive to monitor. They also maintain critically important social relationships that are lost due to whaling. While the global moratorium has helped to ensure that many species and populations have not gone extinct, many populations are still recovering from whaling and several populations remain in danger of extinction, including the North Atlantic right whales; only 300-400 exist today. At the same time, whales everywhere face other human-caused threats such as fisheries bycatch, pollution, ship strikes and climate change.

Studies point to overfishing as the likely culprit in fishery declines, not the whales as Japan and its allies like to claim, since commercial fishery species and whale food sources have little overlap. In fact, whales are beneficial to fish populations; they are ecosystem engineers who increase primary productivity through the distribution of nutrients. Meanwhile, whale watching, a $2B global industry, attracts 13M+ people annually; when properly managed, it offers a viable, ethical, alternative income source.

 Whales play a vital role as "ecosystem engineers"—after feeding at depth, they cycle nutrients to the surface through their fecal plumes which fertilize the waters and increase primary productivity (called the “whale pump”). They also transport nutrients across oceans during their migrations from nutrient-rich to nutrient-poor habitats (called the “great whale conveyor belt”). Further, they sequester large amounts of carbon when they die, and their body sinks to the seafloor (known as “whale falls”).

There have been attempts to lift the ban on commercial whaling under the guise of food security. However, whales are unsuitable as a commercial food source as they are long-lived, slow to mature, and have low reproductive output. In addition, whale meat and blubber are often contaminated with high levels of toxins such as mercury and PCBs, making it unsafe for human consumption. At the 2024 IWC meeting, 110 signatories from West and Central Africa  (the region of the majority of proponents of the proposal) condemned the proposal and stated that whale meat consumption doesn’t contribute to food security in their region.