INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT OF WHALES AND WHALING - AN HISTORICAL REVIEWOF THE REGULATION OF COMMERCIAL AND ABORIGINAL SUBSISTENCE WHALING

The exploitation of whales has spread over the centuries from coastal to international waters, and from pole to pole. Despite the successive depletion of one species and stock after another, not until the 20th century were attempts instituted to regulate the industry and the catc hes at an international level. Agreements among the whaling companies competing in the Antarctic in the 1930s were closely followed by inter governmental agreements, culminating in the 1946 International Convent ion for the Regulation of Whaling, which established the International Whaling Commission. In 1975 the commission adopted its ''new manageme nt procedure'' for commercial whaling, based on the concept of maximum sustainable yield. A separate but related management procedure for su bsistence whaling operations was subsequently developed, largely becau se of the problems of the Alaskan bowhead hunt. This gave greater weig ht to the perceived dependence of the native communities on the hunt t han to the status of the whale stock. The tensions between the objecti ves of the conservation of the whale resources and the orderly develop ment of the whaling industry continue today. Commercial whaling is for the moment prohibited while a comprehensive assessment of stock statu s and trends is undertaken, together with the development of a revised management procedure. The impact of recent legislative thinking in th e United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, coastal state sover eignty, and the developing trend towards the precautionary principle o f management has caused profound changes in the interpretation and app lication of the 1946 convention and the consequent management policies by which it is implemented.