ABSTRACT
Current IWC rules adopted by the commission in 1975, and agreed to by Norway, require that stocks that have been reduced to below 54% of their original pristine (before hunting) level should be protected from commercial hunting. In 1985 analysis of scientific evidence by members of the IWC Scientific Committee showed that the north east Atlantic minke whales may have been reduced to as little as 30% of their original numbers, and the stock was defined as ‘protected’ by the IWC that year. But Norway objected to that management decision, in the same way that it had earlier objected to the commercial moratorium. Norway adamantly claimed for a number of years that there are somewhere in the region of 86,700 minke whales in the Northeast Atlantic. However, Commissioners cannot have failed to note that the Norwegian Fisheries Ministry has admitted that the 1995 commercial quota is to be reduced to 232 from 301 because it had ‘misjudged stocks due to a computer programme error’. However, the Norwegian Whalers Association has stated that it will kill the full 301 quota unless the authorities give ‘full compensation for the reduction’.
