The Case for (Sustainable) Whaling

[I published the following article in the English-language Reykjavik magazine Grapevine, July 2013:]

World food prices have soared in recent years, not least after the financial crisis of 2007–8. Expectedly, everywhere the poor are hit hardest. But a large source of cheap, healthy food is available, and hardly utilised: the whale stocks in the seven seas. Iceland is one of the few countries which allow some whaling. The two stocks harvested in Icelandic waters are the minke whale, one of the smaller whale species, and the fin whale, the world’s second-largest animal. These stocks are in good shape: According to Icelandic marine biologists, there are about 40,000 minke whales and 20,000 fin whales roaming around in Icelandic waters. There is therefore no problem in harvesting a few hundred whales of each stock every year. Whaling is fully sustainable in Iceland.

The European Union—where Iceland has recently applied for membership—is however adamant against whaling. The motive is political. The whale is, with the African elephant and a few other big animals, a part of the “charismatic megafauna” embraced by environmentalists, a powerful political constituency in Europe. The whale has no longer the image of the deadly Moby Dick in Melville’s novel. Now, it is supposed to be the smiling, playful Keiko of “Free Willy”. The scientific argument for a ban on whaling is weaker, however. Many stocks, not only the minke and fin whales in Icelandic waters, are abundant. Why are they not harvested?

Part of the answer is history: the terrible overexploitation of whale stocks in early 20th century. The majestic blue whale, the world’s largest animal, was almost driven to extinction. The International Whaling Commission, IWC, established in 1946, proved ineffective in protecting whale stocks. In 1973, a respected Canadian mathematician, Colin W. Clark, published a piece in Science discussing the failure of the IWC and showing that with a high discount rate, and a slow-growing species like the blue whale, it might be profitable to hunt it to extinction. Taking their cue from Clark, environmentalists targeted the IWC and in 1982, they succeeded in having it impose a moratorium on whaling, which started in 1986.

Iceland voted against the moratorium and used a special exemption to continue limited whaling for scientific purposes in 1986–9. In response, the environmentalist organisation Sea Shepherd in the Summer of 1986 sank two whaling boats in Reykjavik harbor and attacked a whale processing plant. Iceland left the IWC in 1992 in protest against the disregard it showed for scientific findings. The IWC had not allowed whalers to resume harvesting stocks found to be abundant. It seemed indeed to be turning itself into the International Non-Whaling Commission. The chairman of IWC’s scientific committee, Dr. Philip Hammond, resigned in 1993 from his position for the same reason as Iceland left the IWC.

In 2002, however, Iceland rejoined the IWC, with a reservation that if the scientific evidence favoured sustainable whaling, it would be resumed in Icelandic waters. When the minke and fin whale stocks were found to be abundant, whaling was resumed in 2006, despite loud complaints by the EU. Icelandic whalers are now regaining markets lost during the moratorium, while whale watching at sea is also popular with tourists in Iceland. Moreover, in 2007 three distinguished economists, Quentin Grafton, Tom Kompas and Ray Hilborn, published a piece in Science rejecting Clark’s 1973 argument against whaling. Grafton and his co-authors pointed out that if a particular stock of an animal was owned by someone, that owner would have a vested interest in maintaining a strong stock, because harvesting costs usually are low when the stock is abundant, rising as the population is reduced.

The Icelanders have developed an efficient system in their fishery, making it profitable unlike most fisheries elsewhere. This is a system of individual, transferable quotas which can best be described as private use rights in fish stocks. This system could easily be extended to whales in the Icelandic waters and for that matter elsewhere. This would essentially mean that whales would be privatised, taken into stewardship. Those holding the quotas would behave like owners: they would have a vested interest in maintaining strong whale stocks.

Whaling may not only be sustainable in many stocks, but also necessary. Icelandic marine biologists estimate that whales in the Icelandic waters consume annually about 6 million tonnes of many kinds of seafood, mostly squid and crustaceans, but also 2 million tonnes of fish, such as cod, herring and capelin. By comparison, the Icelanders harvest slightly more than 1 million tonnes of fish annually. It seems obvious that whales significantly reduce the total fish harvest in the Icelandic waters. But even if this was not true, as some environmentalists argue, this would only mean that the whale succeeds in finding and processing nutrients which man, with present technology, cannot utilise. In other words, the whale can then be looked upon as a highly efficient search engine for, and processor of, seafood.

In a world of food scarcity, especially amongst the poor, the fierce opposition of the European Union to sustainable whaling may not only be scientifically misguided, and economically unsound, but also immoral.