Even in Norway, where whaling enjoys more political protection than anywhere else, the industry is tiny β a handful of vessels, a shrinking workforce, a product with limited domestic appetite. The hunts persist because ending them would require a political fight nobody in power particularly wants, not because the nation would miss them.
This matters for the "no exceptions" question. If commercial whaling is already dying of natural causes β killed by indifference, bad economics, and generational change β then an absolute global ban would, in practice, be ratifying a verdict the public has already delivered. The remaining fight is about timing, face-saving, and the legal architecture. And about the Indigenous hunts, which stand apart precisely because they retain what the commercial hunts have lost: genuine community demand, cultural necessity, and demonstrable sustainability.
Is there a middle path?
Between "ban everything" and "the status quo," conservationists have been building a third option: not regulating hunts, but making them unnecessary and protecting whales where they live.
One pillar is the sanctuary movement. At the 2025 IWC meeting, delegates considered a proposal for a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary β a vast protected area where commercial whaling would be permanently off the table. Sanctuaries already exist in the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean; each new one shrinks the map where whaling is legally conceivable.
Another is the economic argument, which may succeed where ethics have stalled. Whale watching now generates far more revenue than whaling in most places it operates β a living whale, seen repeatedly by thousands of tourists, is worth enormously more than a dead one sold once. Iceland's own whaling company has essentially conceded this logic by cancelling seasons for economic reasons. As one industry observer noted, ethics isn't what's stopping Icelandic whaling β it's the market.
A third is continued pressure within the IWC system. The moratorium has now survived forty years and three consecutive attempts to overturn it. Each failed attempt reaffirms the global consensus, even as the holdouts persist. The direction of travel β dwindling demand, cancelled seasons, pending legislation in Iceland β suggests that commercial whaling may end not with a dramatic ban but with a quiet economic whimper.
The harder question remains the Indigenous hunts. Here, the emerging consensus among many conservationists is pragmatic: focus political energy on ending the large-scale commercial hunts, which take the most whales for the least defensible reasons, while respecting the small, strictly managed subsistence hunts that demonstrably sustain both whales and cultures. It is not philosophically pure. But it may be the most whales saved per unit of political effort β and in conservation, as in medicine, triage matters.
The question returns
So: should whaling be banned worldwide, with absolutely no exceptions?
The photograph that prompts the question β a whale hauled by ropes toward a ship, crew watching from the deck β captures why the debate refuses to die. It is an image of power exercised over a creature that cannot consent, and it provokes a visceral response. But the policy question behind the feeling is genuinely hard, because it asks us to weigh incommensurable things: the inner life of a whale against the inner life of a culture; the clarity of an absolute rule against the wisdom of a managed exception; the sins of an industry against the rights of peoples who never sinned.
What is not in doubt is the trajectory. Forty years ago, dozens of nations hunted whales commercially. Today, three do β and even there, the economics are failing, the public is turning, and the hunts survive on borrowed time. The Indigenous subsistence hunts, meanwhile, continue under some of the most careful wildlife management on the planet, taking a few hundred animals a year from recovering populations.
Perhaps the most honest answer to the question is another question: what are we trying to save? If the goal is the maximum number of whales swimming in healthy oceans, then the priority is clear β end the commercial hunts, tackle ship strikes and bycatch, protect habitat, and let the small, sustainable Indigenous hunts continue under the science-based management that has already proven itself. If the goal is a moral absolute β no whale ever killed by human hands β then the price is the end of cultures that have lived with whales, respectfully and sustainably, since before recorded history.
The whales, meanwhile, keep singing β in clan dialects, in evolving songs, in the dark water under the ice. They have been here far longer than the debate. The least we owe them is to get the answer right.
Sources
- Species Unite β "Commercial whaling continues in three countries, 40 years after ban": https://www.speciesunite.com/news-stories/commercial-whaling-continues-in-three-countries-40-years-after-ban
- OceanCare β "IWC70 in Hobart: two anniversaries, old and new threats to whales" (2025): https://www.oceancare.org/en/stories_and_news/iwc70-hobart-press-release/
- WWF Whales β "International commercial whaling ban at 40" (2025): https://wwfwhales.org/news-stories/iwc-commercial-whaling-moratorium-40
- IFAW β "IWC summit marks milestone β whaling nations keep blocking progress" (2025): https://www.ifaw.org/uk/press-releases/iwc-milestone-whaling-nations-block-progress
- IWC β Aboriginal subsistence whaling catch limits (2026β2031): https://iwc.int/management-and-conservation/whaling/aboriginal/html_76
- Cambridge Prisms: Extinction / PMC β "On the edges of extinction: Indigenous whaling governance, the 1977 'bowhead controversy' and its legacy": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11895709/
- Marine Connection β "70th meeting of the International Whaling Commission" (2025): https://marineconnection.org/70th-meeting-of-the-international-whaling-commission/