Fisheries Research 52 (2001) 217±225
Protecting whales by distorting uncertainty:
non-precautionary mismanagement?
Tore Schweder*
Department of Economics, University of Oslo, Box 1095, Blindern 0317, Oslo 3, Norway
Received 15 July 1998; received in revised form 8 February 1999; accepted 25 July 2000
Abstract
Precautionary management is based on science, and is incompatible with large ¯uctuations in the management regime.
Whaling is managed by the International Whaling Commission, and has seen large ¯uctuations. It is argued that both the
period of intense Antarctic whaling and the current period of protectionism have been unduly prolonged by scientists
expanding out of proportion the uncertainty surrounding management issues. In the 1950s, uncertainty concerning ®n whale
stock status and trend was consistently distorted from one quarter, and in the 1990s a minority in the Scienti®c Committee
blocked consensus over the revised management procedure that had been successfully developed by the Committee. In both
cases, the political consequence of expanded uncertainty in the science was lack of action resulting in a continuation of
business as usual. Extending a period of heavy exploitation longer than the resource can sustain is mismanagement. Extending
a period of extreme protectionism when the resource is known to scientists to sustain valuable exploitation is also
mismanagement even from a conservationist point of view. This might, in fact, erode the role of science in management and
thus prepare the ground for subsequent overexploitation. Distorting uncertainty by injecting controversy or otherwise
expanding uncertainty has contributed to excessive ¯uctuations in management regimes and consequently in stock abundance.
Detrimental ¯uctuations might continue, since science is side tracked and management now is based on sentiments that might
fade. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: International Whaling Commission; Revised management procedure; Instability in management
1. Introduction
It is widely recognised that a prerequisite for precautionary ®sheries management is a proper recognition of the uncertainties surrounding our understanding of the ecosystem and the ®shery itself.
Improper recognition of uncertainties has usually been
towards neglecting or underestimating uncertainties.
According to FAO (1995), ``A precautionary approach
*
Tel.: ‡47-228-55127; fax: ‡47-228-55035.
E-mail address: tore.schweder@econ.uio.no (T. Schweder).
speci®cally requires a more comprehensive treatment
of uncertainty than is the current norm in ®shery
assessment. This requires recognition of gaps in
knowledge, and the explicit identi®cation of the range
of interpretations that is reasonable given the present
information.''
An overemphasis on uncertainty might also be
detrimental both in ®sheries management (including
whaling) and more generally. When uncertainty is
unduly expanded, the ®eld is open for management
to be based on sentiments or narrow economic
or political interests. This will tend to create
instability in management causing both inef®ciency
0165-7836/01/$ ± see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 1 6 5 - 7 8 3 6 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 2 6 3 - 0
218
T. Schweder / Fisheries Research 52 (2001) 217±225
and increased danger of long-term damage to the
system.
Unstable management is less precautionary than
stable management at the same long-term level of
utilisation, almost by de®nition. It is furthermore less
ef®cient from a resource utilisation point of view. For
these reasons, it is important to obtain an appropriate
understanding of the uncertainties involved in a given
management context. Since science related to management usually is a collective enterprise, with laboratories or scienti®c committees expressing the views, it
is important that the agreed views and controversies
expressed by the scienti®c body as a whole are
appropriately balanced.
Schweder (2000) argue that unnecessary controversies were injected and sustained in the ®n whale debate
in the Scienti®c Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in the 1950s, and that they
contributed to prolong the period of excessive whaling
in Antarctica. This is summarised below. At present,
the political situation is reversed, dominated by
unconditional protection for whales. In the present
paper, I discuss the controversy over the revised
management procedure (RMP) in 1991. The evidence
suggests, in my view, that the controversy was unnecessary and that it was injected into the debate for
reasons outside science.
2. Controversies in science in the International
Whaling Commission
The International Convention for the Regulation of
Whaling sought ``to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the
orderly development of the whaling industry''. The
Convention took note ``that the history of whaling has
seen over-®shing of one species of whale after another
to such a degree it is essential to protect all species of
whales from further over-®shing'', and it stated that
management ``shall be based on scienti®c ®ndings''
(International Convention for the Regulation of
Whaling, 1946).
IWC came into operation in 1949. In 1951, the
Scienti®c Committee was formed. The status of the ®n
whale stock in the Southern Hemisphere was the main
topic of debate in the Scienti®c Committee throughout
the 1950s. The broad picture is as follows.
2.1. The fin whale controversy
Pelagic whaling in Antarctica was at the outset
based on the concept of the blue whale unit: one unit
being one blue whale, two ®n whales, 2.5 humpback
whales or six sei whales. Quotas were given in these
units and it was up to the whalers to determine the
species and stock composition of the total catch. From
1946 to 1953 the quota was 16 000 units. This level
was in 1951 believed by the scientists to be too high,
``. . . but, in all the circumstances'' they did not
recommend any change.
Ruud (1952) doubted that the stock of ®n whales
could sustain the heavy exploitation it was subjected to
in the long run. Decreasing average length, and increasing percentages of immature whales in the catches were
to him signs of depletion. From catch per unit effort
statistics, the blue whale stock was found to be in
decline, and the ever increasing catches of ®n whales to
be expected as the blue whale catches fail would be
unsustainable. Based on an area-speci®c analysis of
catch per unit effort (CPUE) and of catch composition,
the Scienti®c Committee, except for the Dutch member, found in 1953 that both the blue and the ®n whale
stocks showed ``unmistakable signs of depletion''.
The dissenting scientist argued that the mode of
operation had changed and that the CPUE series were
dif®cult to interpret. Based on a replacement yield rate
of 8% and a pre-war population size of 375 000 ®n
whales and a contemporary abundance of 190 000, he
calculated the replacement yield in 1953 to be about
24 000 ®n whales, which was the number of whales
taken yearly at the time. Despite the lack of agreement
among the scientists, the catch limit was reduced from
16 000 to 15 500 blue whale units.
Next year, the Scienti®c Committee strongly
recommended the quota be reduced to 14 500, but
against objections from the same dissenter. He argued
that it would be suf®cient to raise the minimum length
for ®n whales so that more whales which otherwise
would die naturally would be taken. In 1955, he was
the only appointed member of the Scienti®c Committee dissenting from advising a reduction in the total
limit of 14 500 blue whale units. Netherlands voted
against lowering the quota by referring to the
disagreement among the scientists.
The debate went on with new papers bringing
further evidence and concluding that the ®n whale
T. Schweder / Fisheries Research 52 (2001) 217±225
stock was declining and could not sustain the catch.
These papers were almost as a matter of routine
objected to by the same dissenting Dutch scientist.
His arguments varied, but were never particularly
strong, even by the standards of the day.
In the Commission, the Netherlands pushed consistently for higher quotas, often by arguing that the
scienti®c evidence for the ®n whale stock being
depleted was insuf®cient. The political climate hardened, and in 1959 the Netherlands and Norway
withdrew from the Convention, the Netherlands,
because it did not get higher quotas, and Norway,
because the quota was not reduced. In that year, the
majority in the Scienti®c Committee repeated its
advice that the catches were excessive and regretted
that the quota had been raised from 14 500 to 15 000
blue whale units.
The period ended with a deal: to bring the
Netherlands back to the Commission, no catch limits
were set for the Antarctic seasons 1960/1961 and
1961/1962. It was furthermore decided to establish a
committee of three scientists (Allen, Chapman and
Holt) to resolve the ®n whale debate and to
strengthen the scienti®c basis for whale management.
The Commission resolved to bring the Antarctic
catch limits into line with the scienti®c ®ndings
by the summer of 1964. A more detailed account
of the ®n whale debate is presented in Schweder
(2000).
2.2. The revised management procedure controversy
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, it was gradually
understood that whaling had been excessive, and that
many stocks of whales had been depleted. The antiwhaling cause gained widespread support, and the
green movement became a formidable force.
In 1982, IWC decided to impose a moratorium on
all commercial whaling. The moratorium issue was
discussed in the Scienti®c Committee. From the report
(International Whaling Commission, 1983), it appears
that the discussion was polarised. A number of members argued that whaling should be managed on a
stock by stock basis. Although many stocks were in
need of protection, there were other stocks like the
Antarctic minke whale that were in good shape and
could sustain catches. It was also argued that although
scienti®c uncertainty should be exposed where it
219
existed, it was a problem that the Scienti®c Committee's report tended ``to be inconclusive and equivocal
on many issues, when a little more time and effort
might have produced a more balanced conclusion''.
Their worry was that unnecessary controversies in the
Committee appeared to the Commission as grave
scienti®c uncertainty. It is possible that this was an
optimistic view, if controversies were injected, more
time would hardly help. Other members argued in
favour of the blanket moratorium on the basis of
extensive scienti®c uncertainty. They also claimed
the experience to have been that the perceived status
of whale stocks became more pessimistic as knowledge improved. The Scienti®c Committee gave no
coherent advice to the Commission regarding the
moratorium.
Gulland (1988), who joined the Committee of Three
in 1961, took stock of the whaling debate: ``. . . some
people opposed to whaling largely for . . . ethical
reasons, and who supposedly occupied the moral
high ground, have not been wholly objective in their
use of science. As passions rose in the IWC, there were
a number of participants who were selective in the
data they used and the interpretations they made.
Some people feel that this willingness to be less than
objective in the scienti®c arguments over whales has
been . . . damaging to the environmental movement
also.'' The particular damage Gulland refers to was
the lack of co-operation from Japan and the USSR in
the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic
Living Marine Resources (CCAMLR) in the early
1980s. ``. . . it was hardly surprising that the ®shing
(and whaling) countries were suspicious and uncooperative. The history of the IWC had taught them that
some anti-whaling scientists were likely to interpret
any data in a way that showed that catching should be
stopped.''
Day (1992) gives a colourful insight into how the
anti-whaling activity was organised: ``Inside the IWC,
conservationists were at work within the commission's primary defence system: its Scienti®c Committee. For years the IWC whaling nations had defended
their position as scienti®cally based harvesting. The
People's Trust for Endangered Species ®nanced scientists . . . to create population studies for whale species.
Other research had been massively gathered for over
a decade by Dr. Sidney Holt and Dr. William de la
Mare. . . . The science of the whalers soon lay in
220
T. Schweder / Fisheries Research 52 (2001) 217±225
wreckage, and at last population estimates began to bear
some relation to reality'' (Day, 1992, pp. 115±116).
In addition to Holt and de la Mare, Day mentions
Dr. Justin Cooke. They have all been in¯uential
participants in the Scienti®c Committee. Holt was a
member of the Committee of Three in the early 1960s,
and has been present at annual meetings ever since
(until 1995). Cooke and de la Mare have been present
in all annual meetings from 1979 to 1996. Together
with a few other participants, Holt, de la Mare and
Cooke have appeared to form a fraction or group
within the Scienti®c Committee that I choose to call
the green camp. The green camp is not a formal
group. It is composed of scientists that generally
and rather consistently argue against the need for
lethal research on whales, and against such ®ndings
that lend support to the position that some speci®c
commercial whaling operations can be reopened without appreciably risking stock depletion provided the
whaling is tightly controlled. Members of the green
camp tend to support each other in debates within the
Scienti®c Committee. For the sociologist of science,
the group behaviour (of the green camp and of other
loose groups) within the Scienti®c Committee should
be a fascinating subject. This is, however, outside my
scope. I note only that in the controversies I have
looked into since 1981, the green camp with some of
the scientists Day mentions as the core has consistently been involved at the radical green end. The
controversies were over the moratorium in 1982, over
the RMP in 1991, over the Southern Hemisphere
Sanctuary in 1993, and over the minke whale abundance estimate in 1996 (International Whaling Commission, 1983, 1992, 1994, 1997). The controversy
over the Southern Hemisphere Sanctuary in 1993 was
reported in the format of ``some and others'' without
naming, but the polarisation was the familiar one.
An international group of outside scientists ``could
not fail to detect the continuing existence of deep
divisions and lack of mutual con®dence between some
of those involved in the affairs of the Scienti®c
Committee of the IWC'' (Anderson et al., 1987). They
also found ``that the Scienti®c Committee has been
unduly exposed to the repercussions of political disputes between the whaling and non-whaling countries,
and more recently, to external groups who are pressing
for a total ban of all whaling for reasons which are not
within the competence of the IWC to assess. It would
be dif®cult for any scienti®c advisory body to have
maintained a calm, rigorous and strictly impartial
approach in such emotive circumstances.'' This drew
a reaction from Holt (1988): ``Most of the statements
made by the group about the Committee's work and
whaling management by the IWC are ill-informed,
irresponsible and unhelpful where not damaging.''
2.3. The revised management procedure
A substantial methodological contribution from
members of the green camp was made when the
Scienti®c Committee developed a precautionary management procedure. Together with introducing a moratorium on commercial whaling from the 1985/1986
pelagic and 1986 coastal season, the Commission
decided in 1982 to carry out a comprehensive assessment of potentially exploitable whale stocks by 1990
``at the latest''. As part of the comprehensive assessment, work was undertaken to revise the management
procedure adopted in 1976. This work has been
extensive. The aim of the exercise was to construct
a procedure that based on periodical abundance estimates with accompanying standard errors, historical
catch data, and possibly other data, would automatically produce yearly catch limits for a given whaling
operation.
The procedure put forward by the Scienti®c Committee in 1991 is a Bayesian statistical methodology
for interpreting the incoming abundance estimates
together with the known catch history of the operation,
to provide a posterior distribution of the parameters
needed for setting the catch limit for the year in
question. Caution has been built into the procedure
in several ways. A cautious prior distribution for the
internal parameters (the degree of depletion, the maximum sustainable yield rate of the stock and the
multiplicative bias of the abundance estimates) is
combined with information obtained from abundance
estimates. To prevent positive bias in the abundance
estimates or negative bias in their standard errors
having a detrimental effect, the information is de¯ated
by multiplying the standard errors (of log abundance)
by four. In this way, the procedure only slowly adjusts
the quotas on the basis of incoming data from its
cautious initial level. The procedure was extensively
simulation tested, and its precautionary nature
was demonstrated. The procedure proposed by the
T. Schweder / Fisheries Research 52 (2001) 217±225
Scienti®c Committee was made still more precautionary on the initiative of the Commission when it
accepted the draft procedure in 1991 for further
development. The procedure is explained and discussed by Cooke (1995), and in International Whaling
Commission (1992 and 1993).
Incidentally, the development of the RMP has been
organised in an interesting way. There were ®ve
separate development teams. About twice a year, over
a 5-year period, the teams got together in week-long
meetings with a few additional scientists to discuss
recent developments in each of the ®ve procedures to
compare simulation results and to plan simulation
experiments for the next half year. Some teams consisted of scientists from whaling nations and others
from the green camp. The process of mutual learning
and competition turned out to be productive. Despite
the great differences in technique between the ®ve
draft procedures, they all improved signi®cantly in the
process, and their ®nal performance properties did not
differ dramatically. Cooke (1995) characterises the
RMP as a new approach to ®shery management.
The process of development of the procedure was
also innovative and of more general interest. Unfortunately, this story has not been properly told in the
literature, except implicitly in International Whaling
Commission (1985±1993).
The Scienti®c Committee had a dif®cult choice in
1991 when selecting one of the draft procedures to be
recommended to the Commission. There was considerable debate, but based on the scienti®c considerations and with the highest emphasis on risk
minimisation the Committee recommended one of
the procedures as the best single stock procedure
(International Whaling Commission, 1992).
The recommended procedure was developed by
Justin Cooke. He joined, however, a minority that
objected to the recommendation. The minority was
led by Holt and de la Mare and it included 7% of the
Scienti®c Committee. The minority suggested that all
®ve competing procedures should be forwarded to the
Commission, and among them, they preferred the
procedure developed by de la Mare. For this procedure, they said ``the catch limits decision rules seem so
intrinsically cautious (conservative), it is notable that
it has proven possible to devise a scheme with satisfactory, if not spectacular, performance in providing
high sustained catches in the future, and minimal
221
disruption to an industry once it has been permitted
to resume. A part of the price paid for this performance
is that a depleted stock may be protected longer than
would be the case with other procedures before such
permission would be given'' (International Whaling
Commission, 1992).
It is remarkable that Cooke joined the minority and
thus weakened the recommendation to the Commission that the procedure he had worked so hard to
develop himself was the best single stock procedure.
That he also signed the minority statement concluding
that another procedure was the one to be preferred
adds support to the hypothesis that the green camp had
an agenda of a more political nature.
It is unusual for the Scienti®c Committee to advice
the Commission as a committee when controversy has
developed in the Committee, instead of using the
``some and others'' format. However, the selected
procedure was recommended by the Committee as
such, and it named the members of the minority. This
recommendation was thought to be of outstanding
importance by many members.
The controversy in the Scienti®c Committee made
it possible for the anti-whaling majority in the Commission to reject a resolution which ``expressed con®dence, trust and gratitude to the Scienti®c Committee
for its work over the past 3±4 years . . . and adopt the
(recommended) procedure with a tuning of 66%''.
Australia opposed the resolution because it had missed
some signi®cant points, and introduced another resolution which was adopted by the majority. Here, ``the
Scienti®c Committee's recommendation . . . upon
which further development of the RMP shall proceed''
was accepted, but with the high tuning level of 72%.
The choice of 72% rather than 66% reduces the catch
quotas computed by the procedure.
Norway voted against the majority resolution
because it ``suspected it would further delay implementation of a revised procedure and will stipulate
protection levels that will virtually prevent resumption
of commercial whaling in the foreseeable future''.
Although the Commission resolved to continue the
work with due diligence, it has still in 1999 not
implemented a management procedure for any commercial whaling operation. There has, however, been
commercial minke whaling in the northeastern
Atlantic by Norwegians since 1992, regulated by
the Norwegian government using the recommended
222
T. Schweder / Fisheries Research 52 (2001) 217±225
procedure tuned to 72%. This whaling is legal under
international law since Norway objected to the moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982.
3. Discussion
3.1. Uncertainty in the management context
An intrinsic dif®culty in science related to the
management of ®sh, whales or other large-scale
aspects of the environment or natural resources is that
one cannot possibly do experiments with the great
oceans or other major parts of the environment. The
scienti®c evidence is therefore often of an observational nature. Hard experimental evidence might only
be available for bits and pieces of the picture. The
scienti®c basis for management of ®sheries and whaling will necessarily involve judgement of a subjective,
preferably inter-subjective, character. FAO (1995)
points to the importance of not understating the
uncertainties surrounding ®sheries management. My
point is that exaggerated uncertainty is also potentially
damaging.
3.2. Was uncertainty distorted in the IWC?
It is dif®cult to escape the conclusion that unnecessary controversies were injected and sustained over
the ®n whale issue in the 1950s and that they helped
the Dutch politicians argue their case in the Commission, and this was a contributing factor in prolonging
the period of excessive whaling in Antarctica.
Unfortunately, unduly expansion of uncertainty is
not only a matter of the past. The Committee of Three,
of which Holt was a member, was brought in by the
Commission for the purpose of sorting out the ®n
whale debate, and to improve the competence in
population dynamics and other management-related
®elds within the Committee. It is ironic that claims of
a hidden agenda have re-emerged. Butterworth (1992)
uses the term hidden agenda without naming names,
but clearly with reference to the green camp in the
Scienti®c Committee. He holds that under the terms of
the convention, the agenda: to ban whaling on grounds
of animal rights or because whales are sacrosanct, had
to be hidden and to be played out in the Scienti®c
Committee.
Holt (1992) perhaps, expressed this agenda: ``This
year we successfully resisted enormous pressure from
Iceland, Norway and Japan to lift the moratorium. But
we do face a real possibility that some commercial
whaling will be allowed to resume in 1992. . . .We
have, as it were, gained time through talking about
science and conservation. . . .At the same time, scienti®c research that is relevant has been supportive, and
political lobbying through the IWC delegations, primarily, and through their superiors in Government,
has been intense and continuous. . .. I think we are
all agreed that we should aim at keeping the moratorium in place, at least until the year 2000. . . .If we
can do that and if we can hold the dam, as it were,
for a few more years, that will give us time to
assemble the ethical arguments against whaling, and
to get them diffused further in the world. . . .We have,
however, established the effectiveness of combined
operations in science, politics and public information.
We have established the multiplying effect of environmental and animal welfare organisations working
together. . . .There has been too much diversion of
activity towards the idea of maintaining simple
diversity in the living system of the planet. This can
too easily move into saving endangered species and
not caring for minke whales, harp seals, or East
African mammals. They are in the hundreds of
thousands or millions.''
Before the meeting in 1991, there were no signs of
unease with the development of the RMP. Cooke and
de la Mare were indeed active in the process, and
Cooke did not express any doubts before his procedure
was selected with respect to the appropriateness of
using his procedure for managing whaling in the real
world. Holt was also very supportive of the development work and the achievements. If the opposition
against the recommended procedure was based on a
sudden understanding at the 1991 meeting, one should
expect the minority scientists to continue to argue
against the RMP. The RMP was, after all, presented to
the Commission for adoption, and the Scienti®c Committee has carried out the further work it has found
necessary from a scienti®c point of view to have the
procedure implemented for managing minke whaling
in the North Atlantic and the Antarctic. Since Norway
is using the RMP outside the IWC to regulate its minke
whaling, the performance properties of the procedure
are an important issue, not only from an academic
T. Schweder / Fisheries Research 52 (2001) 217±225
point of view. Scientists behind the minority statement
in 1991 have, however, not been particularly active in
investigating the RMP further, except for pointing out
that extreme the so-called process error could lead to
unsustainable catch limits. To the extent the RMP has
been further investigated, the driving force has mainly
been USA and its scientists.
In addition to a review of the RMP commissioned by
the US National Marine Fisheries Service (the report is
available from the International Whaling Commission
as document IWC/46/24) and some further work on the
robustness properties of the RMP, US scientists regularly check the quota for northeastern Atlantic minke
whaling calculated in Norway. This cross-checking
revealed numerical weaknesses in the IWC computer
program for RMP calculations (International Whaling
Commission, 1998). The point here is that green
camp scientists have not been particularly active in
substantiating their objection in 1991 towards the
recommended procedure, which forms the core of
the RMP. Instead, they caused a new controversy in
1996 when estimates of abundance of northeastern
Atlantic minke whales were reviewed in the Scienti®c
Committee (International Whaling Commission,
1997). If that controversy had been sustained, Norway
would have come under more political pressure when
continuing its minke whaling.
There is certainly evidence supporting the view that
the minority statement in 1991 was an act of injecting
controversy creating scienti®c room for political
action. From the point of view of ``holding the
dam'', the minority statement must be regarded as a
success since the IWC is still dragging its feet on
implementing a management regime based on the
RMP. As far as the IWC is concerned, the moratorium
on commercial whaling is still in force.
3.3. Long-term effects on harvest and ecosystem
of unduly expanded uncertainty
The Whaling Commission is indeed international.
In international negotiations consensual knowledge is
more important than advanced knowledge. Regulatory
actions, such as reducing quotas from a stable level
which the industry has adapted to, or implementing a
management regime with non-zero quotas where there
earlier was a moratorium, are vetoed more easily the
more uncertainty that surrounds the knowledge.
223
According to Underdahl (1989), ``substantial uncertainty . . . may serve as the political equivalent to live
ammunition in the hands of actors opposed to (new)
regulatory measures''.
The history of whaling is characterised by enormous ¯uctuations. The slow population dynamics of
whale stocks and the potential for high pro®ts in
whaling, even when stocks are depleted, were the
main contributing factors for these ¯uctuations in
the past. In recent years, the weight of the popular
mood in Western society with whales almost regarded
as sacrosanct (Butterworth, 1992) has been the decisive factor. In the last 50 years, with whaling managed
by IWC and based on scienti®c ®ndings, another
factor contributing to large ¯uctuations is the tendency
to have uncertainty expanded out of reasons. This was
done both in the era of excessive whaling in the 1950s
and in the recent era of protection.
The excessive Antarctic whaling was undoubtedly
prolonged by the politics of the Netherlands. This politics was facilitated by the Dutch member of the Scienti®c Committee, who prevented a clear scienti®c
message to come through. The prolonged excessive
whaling had two effects on long-term management.
Stocks were brought down to low or dangerously low
levels, resulting in long recovery times if rebuilding at all
is possible. The other main effect of the earlier excessive
whaling is the tremendous swing in sentiments in the
western world. The Netherlands is again an interesting
case. From being the most aggressive exploiter, the
Dutcharenowamongthemostaggressiveprotectionists.
The swing towards protectionism resulted in the
moratorium decision in 1982. Currently, commercial
minke whaling is carried out by Norway with a current
take of some 600 whales. Japan takes some 400 minke
whales under special permit (see below). Aboriginal
people catch bowhead whales (Alaska), grey whales
(Siberia and Washington State, US), minke, humpback
and ®n whales (Greenland) and humpback whales
(Caribbean) for subsistence. The present very limited
whaling is under political pressure, and with the
present sentiments in the in¯uential countries, it is
not unlikely that whaling will be reduced rather than
expanded in the near future.
Minke whales are abundant in the North Atlantic
and the Southern Ocean. Many depleted stocks of
other whale species are reported to be recovering at
encouraging rates (Best, 1993). The resource basis for
224
T. Schweder / Fisheries Research 52 (2001) 217±225
whaling is thus broader than to support present exploitation, and it is expanding. The present period must be
characterised by a very low degree of utilisation.
A drastic down scaling was necessary after the
previous period of excessive whaling. The present
period of very low degree of utilisation has, however,
been lasting longer than necessary from a resource
point of view. The period of near complete and
indiscriminate protectionism was prolonged by the
non-adoption of the RMP in 1991.
The lack of scienti®c consensus in 1991 was important for the non-implementation policy we have
experienced, and it eroded the in¯uence of science
to such a degree that the Commission neglected the
unanimous recommendation from the Scienti®c Committee in 1993. The overly expanded uncertainty in
1991 is thus a decisive factor in the prolongation of the
present protectionism period.
How long the current period of extremely low
degree of utilisation of whales will last is hard to
say. Demand for whale meat does not seem to go away
in countries like Japan, Korea, Russia, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and USA. Aboriginal peoples in North America (the Makah Indians in
Washington State) and Siberia have, in fact, been
pressing for expanded whaling. Global demand for
food in general, and meat and fat taken from mammals
in particular is increasing, since the world population
is expanding, and the per capita demand is increasing.
With increasing dif®culties in meeting these demands
from ®sheries, aquaculture and agriculture, it seems
likely that global potential demand for whale meat and
blubber will remain substantial and actually increase.
With recovering stocks, the economic potential in
whaling is likely to increase.
Whale meat and blubber (whale bacon) are highly
valued in the Japanese market place. The supply of
these products comes largely from the 300 minke
whales taken annually in Antarctica and the 100 minke
whales from the North Paci®c taken under special
permit issued by Japan for the purpose of scienti®c
research (see International Whaling Commission
(1998) for a discussion of the scienti®c merits of this
research and of the political issues involved). The
supply of whale products to the Japanese market is
very limited, and the prices are extremely high.
The Norwegian consumer values whale meat,
which is currently often used in restaurants and in
private parties, while it earlier was regarded as cheap
and not particularly festive food. Blubber is, however,
not valued as a diet item in Norway. In recent years,
blubber has been stockpiled in the hope that it again
can be exported to Japan. In the summer of 1995, the
price of blubber rose by a factor of nearly 700, from 11
ùre to 70 crowns per kilogram when it was rumoured
that Norway would issue an export license. This price
increase re¯ects the strength of the demand of whale
products in the global market place, and the potential
pro®ts that can be made.
Holt (1992) hoped to keep the moratorium on
commercial whaling at least until the year 2000. Later,
the dam against whaling should, he hoped, be held by
ethical arguments. Science would then not have much
of a place in the management of whales. But will
ethics be suf®cient to protect whales, in the same way
as Hindu ethics protect the sacrosanct cows?
It is not implausible that in the coming decades,
ethos in USA, EU, Australia and New Zealand will
swing back from caring almost religiously for whales.
With science demoralised since it has little in¯uence,
and possibly side tracked from management since it no
longer is needed when management is based on ethical
arguments, it is not obvious that science will be able to
suf®ciently and quickly re-establish itself as a basis for
management if a new period of exploitation is entered.
We might then again experience a period of unsustainable whaling, possibly with new scientists employing the method of uncertainty maximisation, resulting
in insuf®cient regulation and prolonged excessive
utilisation.
The overly expansion of uncertainty that we have seen
on two occasions in the advice on whaling is then not
only alien to science (National Academy of Sciences,
1992; Schweder, 2000), but might have great negative
effects on the long-term management of whales. In the
short run, the current distortion might lead to cautious
management. But in the long run I fear that the effect of
expanding uncertainty for the purpose of keeping the
moratorium in place could create social volatility that
could lead to management that is far from optimal.
Excessive ¯uctuations as those experienced in
whale management are de®nitely sub-optimal with
respect to long-term yields. Schweder and Hagen
(1999) ®nd that the more variability there is in stock
abundance around a long-term mean, the smaller the
average yearly catch. This is borne out in simulations,
T. Schweder / Fisheries Research 52 (2001) 217±225
and it follows theoretically when the production curve
is convex as in the Pella Tomlinson model.
More important than this, excessive ¯uctuations in
management can produce large ¯uctuations in stock
abundance with increased likelihood of severe stock
depletion in the long run. Protectionism might seem
precautionary in the short run, but with management
based on popular mood in secular societies, there is
hardly any guarantee that the period of protectionism
will last very long. This is particularly true since the
popular sentiments against whaling are largely based
on the conception that whales are threatened by
depletion and extinction, as re¯ected by all species
of great whales, including the abundant minke whale,
being listed by CITES. This understanding is contrary
to the relevant science, as can be seen from the Reports
of the Scienti®c Committee of the IWC. With antiwhaling sentiments based neither on religion (in the
usual sense of the word) nor science, the question is
when they will give way for indifference, possibly
paving the way for a new period of over-utilisation.
The International Whaling Convention from 1946
mandates the regulation of whaling to be based on
scienti®c ®ndings. However, if science is demoralised
by not being listened to, or eroded from the inside by
misconduct in the form of uncertainty distortion or
otherwise, it is less likely that science can function
properly as the necessary check and balancing force
for management.
The Convention, on which IWC is founded, also
mandates IWC to ``provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the
orderly development of the whaling industry''. Aron
et al. (2000) argue that IWC is dysfunctional and even
verging on extinction since it upholds its policy
against commercial whaling in spite of its ability to
regulate whaling according to the Convention by
implementing the RMP. Continued political dysfunctionality in the management of whaling certainly
contributes to the potential for long-term volatility
in whaling, which is inef®cient from a utilitarian point
of view and conservationally dangerous.
Acknowledgements
A pre-runner of this paper was prepared while
visiting the secretariat of the International Whaling
225
Commission. Thanks are due to Ray Gambell and
Greg Donovan at the IWC, and to Ray Beverton,
Richard Laws, Ed Miles, Tim Smith, Oran Young
and others, who all have read earlier versions of the
paper and given me help and encouragement.
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