116
Mark S. Boyce
Large numbers of Humpback and Blue Whales were harvested by Soviets well
after their protection by the IWC (Yablokov 1994), prompting a scheme requiring
international observers on all whaling vessels. The reported kill of Humpback
Whales from one of four Soviet factory ships in the Southern Hemisphere was
152, a number that recently has been corrected to 7,207. Computer simulations
performed by the IWC Scientific Committee found the CLA to be robust to (i.e.,
criteria for evaluation not greatly affected by) 50% underreporting of true catches.
But recent data released by the Russian Federation show that the USSR was
underreporting catches by some 90%. The CLA cannot be expected to perform
adequately with such poor data.
Japanese whaling operations also have been accused of underreporting of
Sperm Whale catches (Kasuya 1991). Norway has been exposed for underreporting of Minke Whale kills in the mid-1980s and has recently resumed whaling in
the northeast Atlantic without IWC permission. We must trust whaling countries
to conform to quotas and to provide reliable data on harvests. Resolving such
issues is beyond the scope of the CLA but is included in the RMP. The adopted
approach, the International Observer Scheme, has proved to be effective at reducing the extent of such underreporting of whale harvests (Young 1993).
Problems of Multistock Management
The spatial structure of whale populations may constitute the most serious risk to
implementation of the CLA. Intended for a single population, Cooke’s CLA can
lead to local stock depletion if spatial distribution is not carefully considered.
Imagine two Minke Whale populations: a near-shore population and a pelagic
offshore population. If quotas for harvest were allocated for the entire area, but all
harvests were near-shore, we would expect to see serious depletion of near-shore
stocks. The Scientific Committee of the IWC is using an approach of dividing
ranges into small areas that will be the focus for CLA application (i.e., “disjoint
areas small enough to contain whales from only one biological stock” [Smith and
Polacheck 1994]). Genetic information or radiotelemetry data can be used to
designate medium-sized areas if data show that a population ranges over a larger
area. Otherwise, quotas will be set within each small area (although this rule is
being contested).
Current guidelines for the RMP have quotas determined by one of two protocols: catch cascading or catch capping. For catch cascading, data among multiple small areas are pooled and the CLA applied; harvests for individual small
areas are proportional to the estimated population of whales in the respective
small areas. Catch capping, however, involves comparison of the summed quotas
over all small units with CLA quotas from the pooled data. If pooling the quotas
from small areas yields higher total quotas than application of the CLA to the sum
of the parts, the original individual-area quotas are used. But if pooled quotas are
less than those from the sum of the individual areas, harvests are reduced proportionally so that the sum equals the pooled CLA quota.
Mark S. Boyce
Large numbers of Humpback and Blue Whales were harvested by Soviets well
after their protection by the IWC (Yablokov 1994), prompting a scheme requiring
international observers on all whaling vessels. The reported kill of Humpback
Whales from one of four Soviet factory ships in the Southern Hemisphere was
152, a number that recently has been corrected to 7,207. Computer simulations
performed by the IWC Scientific Committee found the CLA to be robust to (i.e.,
criteria for evaluation not greatly affected by) 50% underreporting of true catches.
But recent data released by the Russian Federation show that the USSR was
underreporting catches by some 90%. The CLA cannot be expected to perform
adequately with such poor data.
Japanese whaling operations also have been accused of underreporting of
Sperm Whale catches (Kasuya 1991). Norway has been exposed for underreporting of Minke Whale kills in the mid-1980s and has recently resumed whaling in
the northeast Atlantic without IWC permission. We must trust whaling countries
to conform to quotas and to provide reliable data on harvests. Resolving such
issues is beyond the scope of the CLA but is included in the RMP. The adopted
approach, the International Observer Scheme, has proved to be effective at reducing the extent of such underreporting of whale harvests (Young 1993).
Problems of Multistock Management
The spatial structure of whale populations may constitute the most serious risk to
implementation of the CLA. Intended for a single population, Cooke’s CLA can
lead to local stock depletion if spatial distribution is not carefully considered.
Imagine two Minke Whale populations: a near-shore population and a pelagic
offshore population. If quotas for harvest were allocated for the entire area, but all
harvests were near-shore, we would expect to see serious depletion of near-shore
stocks. The Scientific Committee of the IWC is using an approach of dividing
ranges into small areas that will be the focus for CLA application (i.e., “disjoint
areas small enough to contain whales from only one biological stock” [Smith and
Polacheck 1994]). Genetic information or radiotelemetry data can be used to
designate medium-sized areas if data show that a population ranges over a larger
area. Otherwise, quotas will be set within each small area (although this rule is
being contested).
Current guidelines for the RMP have quotas determined by one of two protocols: catch cascading or catch capping. For catch cascading, data among multiple small areas are pooled and the CLA applied; harvests for individual small
areas are proportional to the estimated population of whales in the respective
small areas. Catch capping, however, involves comparison of the summed quotas
over all small units with CLA quotas from the pooled data. If pooling the quotas
from small areas yields higher total quotas than application of the CLA to the sum
of the parts, the original individual-area quotas are used. But if pooled quotas are
less than those from the sum of the individual areas, harvests are reduced proportionally so that the sum equals the pooled CLA quota.