International Whaling Commission

The drafters of the 1946 Convention recognised that there would be a need for scientific research to be carried out on whales which would otherwise be protected from capture under the normal regulations governing commercial whaling. They therefore included a provision to allow governments to grant special permits authorizing their animals to take, kill or treat whales for purposes of scientific research. This provision has been used by many countries over the years to allow limited catches of whales such as calves or other under-sized animals, lactating females or protected species in order to advance scientific knowledge of the whales. However, in the situation that commercial whaling is no longer allowed, albeit only temporarily, there has been the suspicion voiced by some people that governments issuing such permits are doing so in order to maintain the skills and operational effectiveness of the whaling fleets until there is a resumption of full commercial whaling.

Link to website: http://luna.pos.to/whale/icr_wac_gambell.html


Related Video: Lateline http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/xml/ll_vodcast.xml

There are five parts to this and extremely gruesome.

Thanks to AJN for the heads up on this.