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Whales & Whaling
Factfile |
 Whales & Whaling |
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Modern Whaling |
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Japanese market
Although whale oil has little commercial value today, whale meat has come to be considered a delicacy in Japan and Norway. The primary species hunted today is the Minke Whale, the smallest of the baleen whales. Recent scientific surveys estimate a population of 180,000 in the central and north east Atlantic and 700,000 around Antarctica.
Modern whaling is regulated by the International Whaling Commission and while the IWC members voted to impose an open-ended moratorium on commercial whaling, as Norway registered an objection to the moratorium, Norway was allowed to continue commercial hunting of whales and has done since 1993.
In addition to Norway’s commercial whaling, IWC regulations allow for two further types of whaling: whaling for the purposes of scientific research (which is carried out by Japan and Iceland) and subsistence whaling in aboriginal communities, where a group has a culture and tradition of whaling.
Countries which practice aboriginal subsistence whaling are Russia (Siberian groups), Denmark (Greenlandic Inuit), St Vincent and the Grenadines (one man) and the United States (Alaskan Inuit). Canadian Inuit also carry out whaling, though Canada is not a member of the IWC.
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