Review of Spatiotemporal Trends in North Atlantic Norwegian Small Vessel Whaling (1948 to 1985)

The geography and economy of Norwegian small vessel (10–25 m) whaling (småhvalfangst) is reviewed (1948–1986). Chiefly targeting minke whales, the catch was supplemented with northern bottlenose, killer and long-finned pilot whales. Archived catch records (n = 1564 paper files) were compared with digital records held by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). IWC records under-recorded minke whale catches by 21.8%. Uncorrected for struck-and-lost whales, a minimum of 103,481 was caught (94,675 minke; 5386 bottlenose; 2170 killer; 1268 pilot whales). Norwegian policy favouring the closure of whaling areas near Norway, coupled with fleet modernisation, displaced whaling effort southward and westward across the North Atlantic. Annual minke whale catch rates predicted consumer price index adjusted meat prices (R2 = 0.61, F(1, 33) = 51.9, p < 0.001) but not blubber or offal prices. A sigmoidal relationship between whaling ground size (95% kernel density estimate) and catch efficiency (whales vessel−1) indicated that after 1960s, whale abundance was too low to sustain the observed whaling ground expansion. Whaling ground size peaked at 337,000 km2 in 1973. Because multiple species were targeted, catches of more abundant species subsidised the continued exploitation of declining species, for example bottlenose whale. Whaling effort declined chiefly because of decreased profitability and fewer whales. The proportion of unused whaling permits and whaling area size correlated positively, suggesting that the policy of reducing the number of licences to regulate whaling was redundant. Expanding territorial claims, trade bans and the whaling moratorium ultimately put an end to extraterritorial Norwegian small vessel whaling.