Statistics

Reliable statistics from the minke whale harvest in the North East Atlantic are available from as far back as 1930. Since then, about 110,000 minkes have been caught. The largest number caught in one year was 4,341 minke whales in 1958. The average annual catch is approximately 2,000.

The IWC's Scientific Committee has ascertained that a "statistically measurable" reduction in stock size can be traced from 1952 to 1983. There is widespread disagreement on how great this reduction might have been. The Scientific Committee has not been able to provide further details on the subject.

Greenpeace's claim of a 60-70% reduction since the harvest started in 1930 and up to the present day, cannot however, be correct. If one takes their claim seriously, the stock must have consisted of somewhere between 215,000 and 290,000 minke whales. (Based on the Scientific Committee's 1993 figures for the stock of 86,700 minke whales). Even if we choose to overlook the growth potential of depleted stocks it is impossible to make Greenpeace's calculations work. Other stocks of larger baleen whales have growth rates of 8% or more per annum.

Protected Stock
The first minke whale counts in the North East Atlantic were carried out in 1988- 89. Previously, an extremely indirect method of counting was used to calculate the size of the stocks. This was not based on counts, but on the annual variations between the average time it took to catch a whale. This resulted in extremely unreliable results and allowed for a great number of varying interpretations. This method gave stock estimates as low as 20,000 and led in 1985, to the North East Atlantic minke whale stock being declared a protected stock by the IWC's Scientific Committee.

This quota calculation model has now been discarded. Today, only counts are used as a basis for stock estimates. The results of the existing counts, fed into the new quota calculation model, will allow the establishment of whaling quotas for the North East Atlantic minke whale stock. In other words, there are no grounds for retaining the status of "protected stock".

Confidence Interval
Counting wild animals is difficult both on land and at sea, and the resulting figures will never be exact, but will be so-called "best estimates", also called "point estimates". The majority of counts are calculated on the basis of a selected area of the stock habitat, e.g. 10% of it, and then multiplied to obtain the figure for the entire area in question.

The quality of stock estimates varies greatly. By calculating a confidence interval, one attempts to express the degree of uncertainty involved. The IWC's Scientific Committee calculated (1993) the minke whale's "best estimate" at 86,736 in the North East Atlantic, with a 95% confidence interval from 61,000 to 117,000. This means that it is 95% certain that the North East Atlantic stock size is somewhere within this interval. The correct number will most probably be found somewhere in the middle of the interval, and the degree of uncertainty becomes higher as one moves out towards the extremities.

The degree of uncertainty surrounding the size of the minke whale stock is not particularly high compared to the quality of estimated for other wild animals. This is also the case regarding land mammals.