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World Whaling

Introduction / MAP - Aotearoa - Canada - Caribbean - Faroe Islands - Greenland - Iceland - Indonesia - Japan - Norway - Philippines - Russia - USA

Canada

Canada is one of the world's largest (in terms of number of whales taken) whaling nations. Within its borders, a number of indigenous peoples in more than 50 communities continue to hunt whales, as they have done for millennia.
In the northern regions, the Inuit peoples of the Eastern and Western Arctic regions depend on the annual harvests of beluga, narwhal, and bowhead whales. In each case, the harvest is small, particularly when compared to the size of the whale population being hunted. Approximately 800 beluga and 350 narwhal are hunted annually. The Labrador Inuit, living mostly south of these species range, hunt harbour porpoises. Smaller yet is the bowhead whale harvest; between 1991 and 2002 a total of only 6 bowhead were taken under a conservative quota designed to ensure the continued growth of the stock.

 

On the West Coast of Vancouver Island, the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples have utilized whales for several thousand years. Direct relatives of the Makah people living to their south in the U.S., the Nuu-chah-nulth place a similar importance on whaling. Historically they hunted a number of cetacean species, with primary focus on humpback and gray whales. Like the Makah, the Nuu-chah-nulth have waited patiently for decades while the gray whale population recovered from decades of industrial exploitation.

 

 

 

Today, the gray whale stocks have returned to their historic abundance; after decades of waiting, the Nuu-chah-nulth are preparing to go whaling again. Traditional systems ofmanagement have been passed on intact from generation to generation; there is little doubt that the resumption of whaling along the West Coast will be sustainable, respectful, and beneficial to the health of the whale stocks and the communities which depend on them for subsistence.

 

 

The Canada-Greenland Joint Commission on the Conservation and Management of Narwhal and Beluga provides international oversight on the national management practices affecting these two species. Canada also has Observer Government status at meetings of the North American Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) and the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and contributes to the work of the Scientific Committees of these three marine mammal commissions.
Although a founding member of the IWC, Canada exited that organization in 1982, and is respecting its whalers' insistence that Canada not rejoin IWC at this time. Canadian whalers enjoy a constitutional right to hunt whales for nutritional and cultural purposes, and are successfully co-managing these important resources through regimes established
under recent land claims' agreements.