46
Tite Last Resource
the humpback should be prohibith and that the annual kill of
nback whales should be limited to 5,000 or fewer. If this were not
done, they warned, in the coming season the industry would harvest
not more than 8,500 blue whale units (one blue whale unit equals
one blue whale, two nbacks or six sei whales) and then only at the
expense of some 14,000 nbacks. The advice was ignored. The
japanese commissioner proposed a quota of 10,000 blue whale units
and was supported in this by the Russian commissioner. If anyone
doubted the ability of the scientic committee to give an accurate
account of available whales, they should have been dispelled when
in that season the industry processed 8,429 blue whale units includ—
ing 1 3,870 nbacks. And yet the following year, Japan, the USSR,
the Netherlands and Norway again chose to ignore its advice, settling
privately for a limit which in the event they failed to achieve. Since
that disastrous season the quotas have been progressively lowered
almost to those suggested by the scientic committee. Six species of
Whale are now protected, including the humpback and the blue
whale. Whether this restraint on the part of the Commission has
come in time to save some of the whales in the Antarctic, particularly
the blue whale, from extinction is exceedingly doubtful.
The scientic committee’s accurate estimates of whales reect
the growing insight into how populations increase, decline and
generally regulate themselves, which leads naturally to considera—
tions of how such populations, particularly of sh, can best be
exploited by man. The procedure relies basically on nding the
Optimum number of animals which can be culled annually without
causing any large—scale uctuation in the population. In any popula—
tion of sh a difference exists between the numbers born (or reaching
a catchable size) and the numbers dying from natural causes. This
difference represents the sustainable catch. If the stock is small, the
recruitment of replacements will be slow and therefore fewer sh can
be caught each year. The sustainable catch is also small when the
population is very large, because under these competitive conditions
death rates tend to be higher and reproductive rates lower than in
small populations. The maximum sustainable catch lies somewhere
between the high and the low levels. Therefore the aim of scientic
management is to bring the population to this level and then to hold
it there by xing the number of animals caught each year.
According to the British scientist Dr ]. A. Gulland, a member of
the International Whaling Commission’s scientic committee, the
Tite Last Resource
the humpback should be prohibith and that the annual kill of
nback whales should be limited to 5,000 or fewer. If this were not
done, they warned, in the coming season the industry would harvest
not more than 8,500 blue whale units (one blue whale unit equals
one blue whale, two nbacks or six sei whales) and then only at the
expense of some 14,000 nbacks. The advice was ignored. The
japanese commissioner proposed a quota of 10,000 blue whale units
and was supported in this by the Russian commissioner. If anyone
doubted the ability of the scientic committee to give an accurate
account of available whales, they should have been dispelled when
in that season the industry processed 8,429 blue whale units includ—
ing 1 3,870 nbacks. And yet the following year, Japan, the USSR,
the Netherlands and Norway again chose to ignore its advice, settling
privately for a limit which in the event they failed to achieve. Since
that disastrous season the quotas have been progressively lowered
almost to those suggested by the scientic committee. Six species of
Whale are now protected, including the humpback and the blue
whale. Whether this restraint on the part of the Commission has
come in time to save some of the whales in the Antarctic, particularly
the blue whale, from extinction is exceedingly doubtful.
The scientic committee’s accurate estimates of whales reect
the growing insight into how populations increase, decline and
generally regulate themselves, which leads naturally to considera—
tions of how such populations, particularly of sh, can best be
exploited by man. The procedure relies basically on nding the
Optimum number of animals which can be culled annually without
causing any large—scale uctuation in the population. In any popula—
tion of sh a difference exists between the numbers born (or reaching
a catchable size) and the numbers dying from natural causes. This
difference represents the sustainable catch. If the stock is small, the
recruitment of replacements will be slow and therefore fewer sh can
be caught each year. The sustainable catch is also small when the
population is very large, because under these competitive conditions
death rates tend to be higher and reproductive rates lower than in
small populations. The maximum sustainable catch lies somewhere
between the high and the low levels. Therefore the aim of scientic
management is to bring the population to this level and then to hold
it there by xing the number of animals caught each year.
According to the British scientist Dr ]. A. Gulland, a member of
the International Whaling Commission’s scientic committee, the