Chapter IV — International 



needed to make use of the revised management proce- 

 dure. 



By letter of 6 November 1991, the IWC Secretariat 

 notified member nations that Japan had provided a 

 revised research plan for the 1990/ 1991 field season. 



As noted in previous Annual Reports, the Secretary 

 of Commerce certified Norway in 1986 under the 

 Pelly and Packwood-Magnuson Amendments for 

 exceeding quotas adopted by the IWC for North 

 Atlantic minke whales. The President chose not to 

 impose sanctions against Norway under the Pelly 

 Amendment because the Norwegian Government 

 announced its intent to suspend commercial whaling 

 indefinitely after 1987, thereby demonstrating efforts 

 to bring its whaling program into conformance with 

 the IWC conservation program. 



At the 1988 IWC meeting, Norway submitted a 

 scientific research proposal involving the killing of 35 

 minke whales in the North Atlantic. After reviewing 

 the proposal, the IWC adopted a resolution expressing 

 a majority view that its criteria for research involving 

 the killing of whales had not been fully satisfied and 

 calling upon Norway to refrain firom issuing a special 

 permit. Although Norway took 29 minke whales that 

 summer, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce withheld 

 certification in view of Norway's intention to modify 

 its research program to better reflect the advice of the 

 IWC. By the time of the 1989 IWC meeting, the 

 program was not significantly improved and a resolu- 

 tion was again adopted calling on Norway to reconsid- 

 er its lethal research catches. After the meeting, 

 Norway issued a special permit for the research, 

 allowing the take of 17 minke whales. 



In light of Norway's action, the United States 

 began to prepare a certification action. Norwegian 

 and U.S. officials met in November 1989 to review 

 Norway's research program and to discuss Norway's 

 intentions in view of the pending certification. On 

 3 January 1990, the Marine Mammal Commission 

 provided the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

 Administration with a summary of actions regarding 

 Norway's research whaling, noting that certification 

 was justified. On 9 February 1990, the Secretary of 

 Commerce advised Norway's Ministry of Foreign 

 Affairs that, if Norway subsequentiy decided to 



propose a lethal take of whales in 1990 and if the 

 IWC continued to find that the research proposal 

 failed to satisfy all applicable research criteria, Nor- 

 way would be certified. At its 1990 meeting, the 

 IWC adopted a resolution noting that Norway's 

 proposed take of five North Atlantic minke whales did 

 not meet all scientific research criteria and it called 

 upon Norway to reconsider its decision to issue the 

 special permit. On 10 August 1990, Norway advised 

 the IWC Secretariat that it planned to issue the special 

 permit. Subsequently, five minke whales were taken. 



By letter of 19 October 1990, the Secretary of 

 Conunerce wrote to the President certifying that, 

 under the Pelly Amendment, he had found Norway's 

 scientific research activities to be diminishing the 

 effectiveness of the IWC conservation program. On 

 19 December 1990, the President advised Congress 

 that he had received the certification finding, but that 

 he chose not to impose sanctions against Norway in 

 light of significant improvements in its research 

 program. 



Norway did not present a proposal for a scientific 

 catch of whales at the May 1991 meetings of the IWC 

 and its Scientific Committee. Instead, Norwegian 

 scientists provided members of the Scientific Commit- 

 tee with documents describing the ecological impor- 

 tance of minke whales in the northeast Atlantic Ocean 

 and the objectives of the Norwegian marine mammal 

 research program. 



On 16-17 September 1991, Norwegian and U.S. 

 officials and scientists met in Washington, D.C., to 

 discuss IWC issues and Norway's marine mammal 

 research program. During the meeting, the Norwe- 

 gians provided a revised proposal entitled "A Re- 

 search Proposal to Evaluate the Ecological Importance 

 of Minke Whales in the Northeastern Atlantic," and 

 asked U.S. scientists to comment on it. The proposal 

 sought to address the relationships between minke 

 whales and their prey species, and to estimate minke 

 whale energetic requirements. It calls for a take of 

 110 minke whales in the North Atlantic in 1992 and 

 136 minke whales in each of 1993 and 1994. The 

 proposal was reviewed by members of the Marine 

 Mammal Commission's Committee of Scientific 

 Advisors and scientific staff of the National Marine 

 Fisheries Service. 



115 



