In the North Atlantic the minke whale reaches sexual maturity when six to seven years old, and may reach nine metres and a weight of five to eight tonnes. Most calves seem to be born around December, after a pregnancy of ten to eleven months. The calf is assumed to suckle the mother for less than six months. Like all baleen whales, the minke is well adapted to feeding on plankton but is also an important fish feeder. Minke whales off northern Norway, in the Barents Sea and off Spitsbergen consume about 1.8 million tonnes of prey from April to October.
General overview of Norwegian minke whaling
Norwegian whalers have exploited minke whales in three stock areas in the North Atlantic: off West Greenland (last season 1985), in the Central Atlantic (Denmark Strait, Iceland, Jan Mayen) and in the North-East Atlantic, the latter having been the most important one. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial whaling in from 1987 (“The Moratorium”), but based on the rights of member countries established by this convention to file a reservation, Norway is not bound by the Moratorium Resolution. The Norwegian commercial whaling was, however, halted after the 1987 season, to wait for a Comprehensive Assessment promised by IWC to be undertaken by 1990. In 1993, commercial whaling for minke whale was re-established by the Norwegian government based on a Revised Management Procedure (RMP) developed by the IWC Scientific Committee. Over the period 1993 to 2007, the annual catch of minke whale has varied from 218 to 647 animals.
Whaling should follow the rules implied by the RMP
The management of minke whale is based on the application of the RMP. The RMP is a rule for setting catch quotas based on historical catches and abundance estimates. Quotas are set as five-year block quotas. The abundance estimates are based on dedicated sightings surveys and a methodology accepted by the IWC Scientific Committee. In 1995, the total estimate of minke whale abundance in the areas where Norwegian whaling takes place was 118,300 whales. From 1996 to 2001, the North-East Atlantic was covered by annual surveys, producing a total estimate for the covered area of 107,200 minke whales. A new abundance estimate is scheduled for 2008.
The RMP has been developed over several years and tested for robustness against a long series of scenarios through simulation exercises. The IWC decided during the developmental process that the RMP should be in accordance with the Precautionary Approach. Within the RMP, this is defined as a probability of less than five per cent that the minke whale stock decreases below a certain protection level; set to 54 per cent of the initial stock. The Norwegian government has decided that the management of minke whaling should follow the the RMP rules, with regard to quota calculations as well as data collection for abundance estimation.
Revised 15.02.2008