Commercial Whaling Ethics

Since the Middle Ages, commercial whaling has been a major contributor to the world economy. Whales were hunted for various reasons including for their oil and baleen. Hitting its peek in America in the 1800s, new technologies were invented to make hunting and killing whales easier and more efficient (Marrero and Thornton 2011). The modernization resulted in the depletion of the whale population, which drove the fishermen farther and farther out to sea. Seeing a need for global governance, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) established the International Whaling Commission (IWC) on December 2, 1946 (International Whaling Commission 2015). The IWC took effect on July 1, 1949 (International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling 1946). The purpose of the IWC is to “provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry” (International Whaling Commission 2015). As an inter-governmental organization, consisting of 88 member
This job was created through the voice of the people and the governments attempting to support the masses. Public opinion may even be costing the lives of whales rather than saving them. From 2007 to 2010, a compromise was proposed within the IWC stating a non-zero whaling quota, but a much lower and reasonable quota than previously. This compromise was quickly shutdown by the conservationist groups. They were infatuated with the “political symbolism of a zero-hunting rule” and did not consider the facts and figures (Hurd 2012). The moratorium allows for the killing and capture of whales for scientific reasons, and in 2008, over 2,000 whales were killed; if the compromise was adopted, 1,000 whales could have been saved due to new guidelines (Hurd 2012). To make matters worse, in 1989, only 326 whales were