Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling

Failure to provide vital scientific data

The Scientific Committee is reliant upon whaling nations to conduct surveys of the whales they hunt and collect data such as DNA samples to provide the information needed to set quotas. Failure to provide this data can have serious conservation implications.

Determination of who qualifies for an ASW quota

The IWC provides no complete definition of the word ‘aborigines’ although it is assumed through precedent and practice to refer to native or indigenous people with an established and ongoing need to consume whale meat and products. The IWC permits contracting governments to nominate those whom they consider applicable. Even though the IWC has been clear on what they regard as those who should benefit from aboriginal subsistence hunts there is no formal requirement that they meet any definition agreed in wider international law based on cultural or anthropological parameters.

Definition of “Need”

Traditionally, the IWC has taken a twin approach in considering ASW applications; requiring to be satisfied that applicants have demonstrated both a nutritional/subsistence need for whale meat, and a cultural (i.e. traditional) reliance upon it. Historically, the Schedule specified that whales can only be taken by those “whose traditional aboriginal subsistence and cultural needs have been recognized” (our emphasis). Unfortunately, this language was not carried forward when quotas were amended in 2002. WDC believes that the previous twin pillar approach, that highlighted the importance of nutritional need, should be re-examined.

Subsistence

In the majority of ASW cases, biological or nutritional need (i.e. the need for physical sustenance) is met, or supplemented, by other locally-sourced foods (including small cetaceans and other marine mammals) or increasing ‘imports’ of non-local, sometimes ‘western’ food. Thus, to justify a continued claim for an ASW quota, WDC believes that claimants should have to show something more – that their continued nutritional reliance on whales over alternatives is part of their traditional culture. WDC believes that when assessing subsistence need, the IWC should have all the relevant facts before it, including, at least, what takes of small cetaceans are being consumed by these communities in addition to large cetacean takes proposed. Before making a judgment to allow a hunt on a potentially endangered species the Commission must be able to make an assessment of the relative impact of not granting a quota versus the risk of hunting on such populations of whales.