- Japan’s new whaling mothership, the Kangei Maru, arrives in Tokyo, which is the country’s first domestically built whaling ship, set sail on its maiden hunting voyage, heralding a new era for the controversial practice defended by the government as an integral part of national culture.
- The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea binds countries to cooperate on the conservation of whales through the appropriate international organisations for their conservation, management and study. Not necessarily the International Whaling Commission.
| International Whaling Commission The IWC is responsible for setting catch limits for commercial whaling with the exceptions. In 1982 the IWC decided that there should be a pause in commercial whaling on all whale species and populations from the 1985/1986 season onwards. This pause is often referred to as the commercial whaling moratorium, and it remains in place today. The moratorium is binding on members of the IWCJapan left the IWC in 2019 and began to catch whales commercially the same year. Having left the IWC is no longer bound by the moratorium. |
In recent years, Norway and Iceland have caught whales commercially.
Dig Deeper: What is the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO), and who are its members?
