40 years after the whaling ban, whales still need protection

Before the moratorium, Antarctic blue whales were driven close to extinction by commercial whaling. Of an estimated 250,000 animals that once inhabited the Southern Ocean, only a few hundred remained. Today, the IWC estimates there are more than 2,000 Antarctic blue whales. While that number represents an encouraging recovery, it is still only a fraction of the population that existed before industrial whaling.

Despite these successes, the commercial whaling moratorium still needs to be defended today. Iceland, Norway, and Japan continue to allow commercial whaling. Since the moratorium came into force, the three countries have collectively killed over 40,000 whales. Today, species such as minke, fin, sei, and Bryde's whales continue to be hunted commercially by these countries.

But even for blue whales like Mira, the ocean is still far from safe.

"Whales around the world remain under massive pressure from human-caused threats," explains Andreas Dinkelmeyer, campaign manager at IFAW. "They are threatened not only by harpoons, but also by vessel strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, ocean noise, plastic pollution, overfishing, and the climate crisis."

A turning point, not a final solution

The adoption of the commercial whaling moratorium remains one of the most significant conservation decisions of the 20th century.

After roughly three centuries of industrial whaling, the international community recognised that many whale populations could not withstand continued exploitation. The moratorium marked a fundamental shift in how whales were viewed, not simply as a resource to be harvested, but as species deserving protection.

Today, the overwhelming majority of countries support whale conservation. Yet the moratorium has never been universally accepted. A loophole known as "scientific whaling " was quickly used to continue hunting for commercial profit. IWC rules also allowed member states to formally object to decisions. Some countries did just that, while others found different ways to continue whaling:

• Norway filed an objection and still hunts whales commercially today.
• Iceland left the IWC and rejoined in 2002 with a reservation that allowed it to continue commercial whaling, a move that remains legally controversial.
• Japan withdrew its original objection but continued whaling for many years under the guise of scientific whaling. After leaving the IWC in 2019, the country openly resumed commercial whaling.

The 1986 decision was therefore not the end of commercial whaling. It marked the beginning of a political fight for whale protection that continues to this day.

A decades-long fight to defend the moratorium

IFAW was among the organisations that helped secure the moratorium and has spent decades working to uphold it.

One of the most important early milestone came through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). In 1983, shortly after the moratorium was adopted, governments agreed to prohibit most international trade in whale products. Without that decision, global markets could have continued driving demand for commercial whaling.

Over the years, whaling nations Japan and Norway repeatedly sought to weaken protections for whale species through international negotiations. IFAW fought hard to oppose those efforts and ensure proposals to reopen trade did not succeed.

Another major breakthrough came in the Southern Ocean. More than two million whales were killed in Antarctic waters within a single century. In 1992, France proposed the creation of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary to protect one of the world's most important whale habitats. For two years, IFAW supported the initiative through scientific and legal expertise, including contributions within the IWC Scientific Committee. Working alongside other conservation organisations, IFAW helped build support for the proposal, which was ultimately adopted in 1994 with 26 votes in favour. Japan was the only country to vote against it.

Even after the sanctuary was established, challenges remained. Japan continued conducting so-called scientific whaling in Antarctic waters for many years, while other efforts emerged to weaken or replace the moratorium itself.

A later proposal, driven largely by the United States, sought to replace the moratorium with arbitrarily defined catch quotas. That proposal ultimately failed due to strong evidence from scientists supported by IFAW, which demonstrated that the proposed catch limits would not have been sustainable under the IWC's own rules. In the end, the proposal was rejected, and the moratorium remained in place.

The history of the moratorium is a reminder that conservation victories are rarely permanent. Protecting whales requires continued vigilance against political pressure, economic interests, and legal loopholes.

At the same time, the IWC has itself evolved. Over the past four decades, its focus has increasingly expanded beyond managing whaling to addressing the conservation challenges whales face in today's oceans. One important building block in this development towards whale protection was the establishment of the Conservation Committee at IWC.