The Soviet Union was a latecomer to industrial whaling, but it slaughtered whales by the thousands once it started and radically under-reported its take to international monitors.
Workmen dissecting a whale carcass in Antarctica, circa 1935.
Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Emma Carroll, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Southern right wales have been hunted to near extinction. Now their genome has been sequenced to help biologists track their recovery and understand the impacts of climate change, past and future.
Whale watching (here, off Húsavík, Iceland) may be better for the local economy than whale hunting.
Davide Cantelli/Wikimedia
Icelandic whalers have killed more than 1,700 whales since a global ban was adopted in 1986 – up to 2019, when no hunts took place. Is Iceland quietly getting out of the business?
A sperm whale goes down for a dive off Kaikoura, New Zealand.
Heidi Pearson
Protecting forests and wetlands, which absorb and store carbon, is one way to slow climate change. Scientists are proposing similar treatment for marine animals that help store carbon in the oceans.
Increased tourism in Iceland is bringing more attention to controversial practices such as commercial whaling and consumption of whale meat.
ELDING/AAP
Iceland is set to resume commercial whaling in June after a two-year hiatus, arguing that the moratorium put in place by the international community was never intended to be an open-ended ban.
Navin75/Flickr, Australian Marine Conservation Society, ANU
In this episode of Change Agents, Andrew Dodd speaks with Darren Kindleysides and Don Rothwell on how Australia won a case against Japan's whaling activities at the International Court of Justice.
The idea is to come up with better alternatives to this.
Australian Customs and Border Protection Service
Japan’s fleet is on its way to the Southern Ocean for more “scientific” whaling. But a new resolution pointing out the importance of whale poo could help remove Japan’s rationale for lethal research.
Japan’s previous scientific whaling program was shut down. But its new one may not be.
EPA/Tim Watters/Sea Shepherd Australia
Australia’s new resolution will apply stricter monitoring to the special permits that allow some nations to continue whaling. But the new rules are non-binding, meaning countries are free to ignore them.
Can Australians stomach a small, scientifically-sound whale harvest?
Whale meat image from www.shutterstock.com
Chalk it up as a rare conservation win: humpback whales have bounced back so strongly since the whaling era that there is no longer a need to include them on Australia’s official threatened species list.
Japan will need to try again to justify killing whales for scientific research.
AAP Image/Supplied by Sea Shepherd Australia, Tim Watters
This week, Japan announced a research plan for its New Scientific Whale Research Program in the Antarctic Ocean, to replace previous programs. In March this year, Japan’s previous whaling program, JARPA…
Japan’s whaling program was defeated in The Hague, but that might not stop more whales being taken in the future.
EPA/Tim Watters/Sea Shepherd Australia/AAP
Japan is reportedly set to release plans to resume killing whales in the Southern Ocean in the 2015-16 season. It seems like a defiant move, coming just six months after the International Court of Justice…
Whales make more than a splash in the southern ocean.
Micheline Jenner
Centuries of over-exploitation of whales for their meat and blubber has seen populations of most species plummet. But with no small amount of irony, the tables have turned with research discovering that…
Japan’s harvest of endangered minke whales was ruled not to be for scientific purposes.
EPA/Tim Watters/Sea Shepherd Australia/AAP
The International Court of Justice’s ruling this week that Japan’s Southern Ocean whaling program is not scientific does not represent an ultimate victory over whaling. The finer points of the court’s…
Japan has been ordered to quit its scientific whaling program in the Southern Ocean.
Josh/Flickr
Japan’s Southern Ocean “scientific” whaling program is contrary to international law, the International Court of Justice found last night after a four week trial between Australia and Japan in June last…
Australia brings its last case against the Japanese whaling program.
AAP Image
Australia had its second (and last) chance this week to argue against Japan’s whaling program in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). But before it did, New Zealand appeared before the Court to provide…
Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Law, University of the South Pacific and Adjunct Fellow, Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law, University of New England