to the IWC. Although the Department issued a contract for 
this purpose, an acceptable contract report was not available 
for review by the Department in consultation with interested 
agencies and others prior to.the IWC meeting. In the absence 
of an acceptable contract report, the Department prepared an 
"Interim Report on Aboriginal/Subsistence Whaling of the 
Bowhead Whale by Alaskan Eskimos" dated 24 June 1980, based 
upon the draft contract report and other available information. 
The Interim Report detailed the cultural, historic, and 
nutritional needs of Alaskan Eskimos and estimated that the 
number of bowhead whales required to meet these three 
classes of need were 18 to 22, 19 to 33, and 32 to 33, 
respectively. The Interim Report indicated that the cultural 
need was of the greatest significance to the Alaskan Eskimo 
community. 3 
In addition to the Interim Report on the needs of 
Eskimos for bowhead whales prepared by the Department of the 
Interior, the National Marine Fisheries Service conducted 
and prepared reports on research efforts relating to the 
status and trends of the bowhead whale population. The 
report on census efforts conducted during the spring of 1980 
provided further support for the population estimate of 
between 1,783 and 2,865 whales, with a best estimate of 
2,264 which had been developed based upon the 1978 census 
efforts. The report also estimated that 1.7 percent of the 
animals observed during the 1980 census were calves. A 
second report entitled "Projections of a Decline in the 
Western Arctic Population of Bowhead Whales" dated June 1980 
was prepared by scientists at the National Marine Fisheries 
Service's National Marine Mammal Laboratory to examine in 
greater detail the results of the preliminary evaluation by 
the IWC's Scientific Committee in 1979 that a very high 
proportion of the recruitment to the adult portion of the 
population had been removed by recent increased Eskimo 
hunting and, as a result of the reduction in recruitment, 
the population could be expected to decline even in the 
absence of any kill by Alaskan Eskimos. This report on 
efforts to model the bowhead whale population on the basis 
of the available information tended to confirm that the 
population would decline. The report indicated that the 
population would decline under both the moderate and pessimistic 
set of assumptions concerning reproductive rate and other 
relevant parameters, and that it was only under the unrealistically 
high optimistic set of assumptions that the population would 
increase while being harvested. 
Meeting of the Scientific Committee 
At its meeting in late June and early July 1980, the 
IWC's Scientific Committee considered the information and 
