The working group met immediately before the 1981 Commission
meeting and a summary of those parts of their report (IWC,
1981d) relevant to management is given below.
(I) Definitions
The group agreed to the following three definitions:
Aboriginal subsistence whaling means whaling, for purposes of
local aboriginal consumption carried out by or on behalf of
aboriginal, indigenous or native peoples who share strong
community, familial, social and cultural ties related to a
continuing traditional dependence on whaling and on the use of
whales.
Local aboriginal consumption means the traditional uses of
whale products by local aboriginal, indigenous or native
communities in meeting their nutritional, subsistence and
cultural requirements. The term includes trade in items which
are by-products of subsistence catches.
Subsistence catches are catches of whales by aboriginal
subsistence whaling operations.
(III) Management principles for aboriginal whaling
There was some disagreement within the group as to whether it
was correct to apply separate management objectives to
aboriginal/subsistence whaling and commercial whaling. It was
suggested that any whaling activity has its own culture, and
is deeply rooted in the history of the nation; as both types
of whaling involve the same interaction between man and whales
as a resource then the same principles and management
objectives should apply.
Others considered that was a much greater dependence on whale
products both for direct subsistence and in a cultural context
in aboriginal whaling. In commercial operations the primary
reason for continued catches was the sale of products, and
not, as in the case of subsistence whaling, to meet immediate
nutritional and cultural needs. For this reason management
objectives for the two types of whaling might well be
different: in commercial operations the objective is to obtain
maximum yields from individual stocks; in aboriginal /
subsistence whaling the yield does not need to be maximised
provided it is at a sufficient level to satisfy nutritional
and cultural needs.
The group recognised that some objectives should be developed
which could be applied to aboriginal / subsistence whaling in
order to avoid the ad hoc consideration of such catches which
was the current practice of the Commission. It agreed on the
following broad objectives:
To ensure that the risk of extinction to individual stocks are
not seriously increased by subsistence whaling;
To enable aboriginal people to harvest whales in perpetuity at
levels appropriate to their cultural and nutritional
requirements, subject to their objectives;
To maintain the status of whale stocks at or above the level
giving the highest net recruitment and to ensure that stocks
below that level are moved towards it, so far as the
environment permits.
(X) Humane Killing
The group agreed that hunting techniques should be made as
'efficient and humane as possible whilst recognising the
essential cultural aspects of the hunt'. In addition to the
data requirements given in Appendix 1a, the group also
recommended that to the 'fullest extent possible' information
on death times and circumstances surrounding strikes should be
provided. [In fact the AEWC have provided detailed information
on the strikes for the 1981 spring hunt - see Table 6 in
Marquette et al. (1982).]