The establishment of the International Whaling Commission in 1946 marked an attempt to bring international limits to an expanding whaling industry. Convened by President Truman in Washington, DC, the Commission introduced successive measures to restrict whaling; the history that followed, however, exposed the distance between agreed controls and the catches made at sea.

Background and Establishment

The Commission emerged amid a sharp rise in industrial catches. The scale of the increase is illustrated by fin-whale figures: 1,303 were taken in 1910, compared with 32,587 in 1958. Sperm-whale catches rose over the same span from 43 to 21,846. The figures were not simply a record of demand: they reflected an industry able to pursue increasingly large numbers of whales even as concern about their survival grew.

The Commission was first convened in 1946 by President Truman in Washington, DC. Its headquarters were later based in Cambridge, England. Its stated practical response was to introduce successive steps to limit whaling, establishing an international forum for restrictions rather than leaving each catch solely to national practice.

Limits and Evasion

The Commission’s measures confronted commercial pressure and quotas that the book describes as unsustainable. One stark example concerned the Soviet Union’s whaling from 1951 to 1970: it took more than three thousand Southern right whales outside international agreements, while reporting only four to the Commission. The discrepancy shows how weak a limit could become when catches were concealed or made beyond the agreements intended to govern them.

Humpback-whale records reveal a similar gap between declared and actual removals. Soviet figures claimed just over two thousand animals; the book reports that the true number killed exceeded forty-eight thousand. Young whales, mothers and calves, and protected species were taken indiscriminately, with figures falsified. These examples make the Commission’s difficulty concrete: international rules could set limits, but the evidence presented here shows that reporting and compliance did not reliably reflect what whaling fleets had taken.

Conservation Stakes and Aftermath

The consequences extended beyond the immediate loss of animals. The book notes that twentieth-century whaling destroyed not only individual whales but also cultural knowledge held within populations, including knowledge associated with exploiting particular habitats. It also links whaling to lower birth rates among survivors. The sperm-whale population, a slow-breeding species, was reported to be growing at only about one per cent a year, making recovery especially gradual.

The Commission’s 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling came, in the account’s assessment, possibly just in time for the sperm whale. Yet the policy remained contested: Norway resumed commercial whaling in 1992, and the moratorium is described as a temporary solution rather than an uncontested settlement. The Commission’s establishment therefore stands both as a turning point in international regulation and as the beginning of an ongoing struggle between conservation measures and the pursuit of whales as a resource.