International Whaling Commission

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is a political fault line in the novel’s conflict over whales. It is invoked both as a target of local anger over fishing restrictions and as a body that Judith Li chooses not to challenge openly, even as she proposes escalating force against whales.

Conservation and the political dispute

The narrative associates the Commission with animal conservation, fishing quotas, and hunting bans. It does not detail the IWC’s structure or procedures; its significance emerges through the arguments made around it, where conservation measures become entangled with anxieties about access to fisheries and the livelihood of smaller operators.

That dispute sits within a broader crisis in marine resources. The novel reports that seventy of the world’s two hundred most commonly exploited fish species are endangered, even as the fishing industry expands. The number of people earning a living from fishing rises from thirteen million in 1970 to thirty million by 1997, while bottom-trawl nets damage ecosystems and deprive marine predators of prey. These pressures sharpen the political stakes around fishing restrictions, but the account does not attribute them to the Commission itself.

Tofino and resentment toward restrictions

In Tofino, Leon Anawak repeatedly hears demands to kill the whales. A frustrated fisherman argues that large fishing companies have already consumed the stocks and are now taking what remains, while ordinary fishermen can only watch. Anawak recognizes a material grievance beneath the hostility: the fishing grounds are accessible only to the largest factory trawlers. The resulting resentment gives fresh force to those who have long opposed the IWC, quotas, and hunting bans.

The local dispute is also shaped by what Anawak cannot say. He knows that the attacks are not confined to the waters visible to Tofino, but he is not permitted to discuss the other incidents. Residents therefore encounter the crisis through their immediate economic pressures, while the larger pattern remains hidden from them. The Commission becomes an available symbol for restrictions and perceived loss of control, even though the whales’ attacks are part of a wider emergency.

Judith Li’s proposed response

At the emergency-policy level, Judith Li rejects the idea of taking on the IWC. Instead, she proposes using sonar against the whales and continuing the attacks until they leave human vessels in peace. Her distinction is politically revealing: she does not frame the response as a direct contest with the Commission, but the proposed campaign puts conservation concerns aside in favor of coercive force.

Li’s position exposes the distance between public anger and government action. In Tofino, the refrain is to kill the whales; at the level of command, Li turns that hostility into a proposed policy of hunting and sustained sonar use. The IWC is not shown directing the response or intervening in events. It functions instead as the recognizable conservation authority that Li declines to confront while pursuing a more aggressive course.

Narrative significance

The Commission links the novel’s local fisheries dispute to the larger argument over how humans respond to nonhuman life. Its name carries the weight of quotas and hunting limits, while the surrounding crisis makes those limits politically vulnerable: declining stocks, industrial fishing, and whale attacks all intensify demands for action. By placing the IWC in the fishermen’s complaints and in Li’s calculation of what not to challenge, the novel shows conservation policy under pressure without reducing the crisis to a dispute between regulators and fishers. The underlying causes and consequences extend beyond either side of that political divide.