Whale Hunting: The Rewarding Effects

WHALING: THE RIPPLING EFFECTS

-Srinivas Raman, National Law University Jodhpur, 2014
¬
INTRODUCTION

“The world is as delicate and as complicated as a spider's web, and like a spider's web, if you touch one thread; you send shudders running through all the other threads that make up the web. But we're not just touching the web, we're tearing great holes in it; we're waging a sort of biological war on the world around us. We are felling forests quite unnecessarily and creating dust bowls, and thereby even altering the climate. We are clogging our rivers with industrial filth, and we are now polluting the sea and the air.”- Gerald Durrell
The judgment delivered by the International Court of Justice on 31st March 2014 is a landmark judgment in

It shall also attempt to pitch an argument against commercial whaling. The paper shall conclude with alternative ways to use whales for the benefit of mankind and the ecosystem by enumerating sustainable development strategies which will help establish healthy cetacean populations.
1. THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF WHALING

The origin of whale hunting dates back millennia to the prehistoric ages. The original method of whale hunting involved driving the animals towards the shore and trapping them once they entered shallow waters. . Subsequently the drogue method of whale hunting was devised where a buoyant object was tied to a harpoon or similar tool which was pierced into the skin of a whale. It was believed that the constant resistance and drag from the buoyant object would soon exhaust the whale which could then be approached and killed easily; this method was mainly used to kill smaller species of whales such as Sperm Whales and Humpback Whales. Several communities have been known to employ similar tactics to hunt whales such as the Native Americans, the Basques of the Bay of Biscay and many others. Commercial Whaling began

Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling refers to the whale hunting carried on by aboriginal communities in less developed parts of the world, this hunting is solely done with the objective of self-consumption and unlike commercial whaling it kills a very limited number of whales. The main objectives of Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling are:
• To ensure that risks of extinction are not seriously increased by whaling;
• To enable native people to hunt whales at levels appropriate to their cultural and nutritional requirements.
• Move populations towards and then maintain them at healthy