ICES involvement in whaling and whale conservation, and implications of IWC actions

From its foundation, ICES had a substantial concern for the conservation of the great whales and the management of commercial whaling. Early studies established the need for regulation. In the 1930s, ICES brought the issue to the attention of the League of Nations and so set in train a series of international negotiations and agree­ments among concerned governments, paralleled by negotiations among whaling companies. After the ratification of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling in 1946, which created the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and its Scientific Committee, the focus of scientific attention and responsibility shifted to the new body. Minimal science was involved in the first decade of IWC regulations, which were largely confined to commercial hunting of the four largest species of baleen whales in the Antarctic. In the 1960s, population models began to be used for calculating catch limits (total allowable catches -TACs - in modern fisheries termi­nology), which were similar to those used by ICES and other regional fisheries organ­izations for assessing the sustainable yields of fish stocks. However, continuing pres­sures for a moratorium on commercial whaling, which was eventually enacted in 1982, gave scientists a respite from the task of annually formulating advice on all catch limits. This respite was used to devise an entirely new approach to regulation, a catch-limit algorithm called the Revised Management Procedure (RMP). The RMP approach is proving to be of interest in a broader fisheries context, and it seems that a renewal of substantive scientific interaction between IWC and ICES might be time­ly and fruitful.