Whaling

Killing whales for food has been happening for millennia. But it was commercial whaling – turning whales into barrels of oil for profit – that led to the wholesale destruction of most of the world’s populations of big whales.

Commercial whaling devastated the world’s biggest whale species, pushing some of them to the very brink of extinction in the early to mid 20^th Century. Whaling for meat, oil, or whalebone was not a new idea, but new explosive harpoons and industrialised factory ships plundering the seas for whales had an even more catastrophic impact than what had come in centuries before.

It was the realisation that catches were declining that led to the creation, by whaling nations, of an organisation that would become the ‘International Whaling Commission’ (IWC).

It’s decision time today for the future of the giant mammal as a U.N. top court rules whether Japan has the right to hunt whales in the Antarctic. Australia has asked the International Court of Justice to stop Japan’s whale hunt claiming their program is not scientific but commercial, because of its large scale.