MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION — Annual Report for 1991 



By letter of 18 December 1991, the National 

 Marine Fisheries Service advised the head of the 

 Norwegian scientific delegation that, while most 

 reviewers felt that the basic structure of the research 

 program was well conceived, they questioned the 

 relevance of the program to the IWC's revised man- 

 agement procedure and to its program in general. 

 Some reviewers expressed the view that the newly 

 adopted revised management procedure obviated the 

 need for the biological information on either the 

 whales or their prey that would be generated by the 

 Norwegian program. 



Marine Mammal Commission's Review of the 

 IWC Conservation Program — In 1991, the Marine 

 Mammal Commission, in consultation with its Com- 

 mittee of Scientific Advisors, undertook a comprehen- 

 sive review and assessment of the 1946 International 

 Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, issues 

 currently before the IWC, and options for the future 

 direction of the IWC conservation program. By letter 

 of 5 December 1991 to the U.S. Commissioner to the 

 IWC, the Marine Mammal Commission noted that the 

 IWC is at a critical stage in its history and that past 

 U.S. positions and approaches on key issues merited 

 a thorough reconsideration. It also noted that U.S. 

 positions on the issues facing the IWC had important 

 implications for U.S. policy in many other interna- 

 tional arenas. The Commission therefore developed 

 and attached to its letter a discussion paper that 

 reviewed the major issues confronting the IWC, 

 assessed possible U.S. positions on these issues, and 

 recommended positions that the United States might 

 take in order to maintain and improve the IWC 

 conservation program. 



While the Marine Mammal Commission concluded 

 that cetacean conservation would best be served in the 

 foreseeable future by maintaining the IWC, it also 

 concluded that the 1946 International Convention for 

 the Regulation of Whaling and the IWC conservation 

 program were outdated and in need of fundamental 

 revision. In particular, they did not reflect modem 

 principles of marine living resource conservation. 

 That is, the Convention has no stated objectives in any 

 of its substantive articles, does not recognize non- 

 consumptive values of whales, does not specifically 

 mandate IWC authority over small cetaceans, and 

 does not recognize either that whales may be affected 



by activities other than direct exploitation or that the 

 exploitation of whales may affect other components of 

 the ecosystem of which they are a part. The Commis- 

 sion also noted that the Convention includes a provi- 

 sion that allows governments to issue special permits 

 to their nationals for lethal takes of whales for re- 

 search, with or without the approval of the IWC. 



The Conunission further pointed out that, while the 

 revised management procedure adopted by the IWC at 

 its 1991 meeting is a sincere effort to improve the 

 management of the whaling industry, it is based upon 

 traditional single-species, maximum sustainable yield 

 concepts and as yet unverified density-dependent 

 assumptions. Thus, by itself, it does not constitute a 

 significant revision of the IWC conservation program. 

 For example, it still fails to address necessary man- 

 agement measures for monitoring the status of target 

 stocks and for verifying or enforcing compliance with 

 catch quotas and other regulations. 



The Commission also urged that, before consider- 

 ing lifting the moratorium on commercial whaling, the 

 United States and other member nations must, at a 

 minimum, be assured that: (1) research and monitor- 

 ing measures are adequate to verify, with reasonable 

 certainty, that exploited populations remain within 

 their optimum sustainable ranges (i.e., a population 

 size between maximum net productivity level and the 

 maximum size supportable within the ecosystem); 



(2) no catches are allowed from any depleted stocks 

 (i.e., stocks below 60 percent of initial size); 



(3) catches, in conjunction with other human activities 

 or natural events affecting the cetacean stocks, do not 

 result in unsustainable mortality levels or reduce 

 population levels more rapidly than can be detected by 

 a monitoring program under the revised management 

 procedure; (4) effective catch verification, enforce- 

 ment, and population monitoring programs receive the 

 fiill support and participation of all countries engaged 

 in commercial whaling; and (5) catches, in conjunc- 

 tion with other human activities affecting cetacean 

 stocks, do not irreversibly alter the fiinctional role of 

 that species in the ecosystem. 



The Marine Mammal Commission concluded that 

 the United States and other like-minded member 

 nations should initiate efforts to revise and update 

 both the 1946 Whaling Convention and the IWC 



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