Form Submission: Participation Entry

Over the 20th century, almost three million whales were killed – most of them in the Antarctic – and many species narrowly escaped extinction. Whaling reached its maximum around 1960 and then declined. By the late 1960s, most countries had ceased whaling, although the USSR and Japan continued for another decade. But why did whaling decline? My research explores this question using an econometric model of supply and demand, covering Antarctic whaling in the period 1945-1977. Unsurprisingly, the depletion of whale stocks had a significant effect on harvests. But other factors were at play, too, even though the effects varied by country. Neither the USSR nor Japan was responsive to changes in the wholesale price of a whale. This is likely due to heavy state involvement in both countries’ whaling industries. The USSR did not even respond to stock changes in this period, perhaps as a result of fixed catch targets. The two other major whaling nations – Norway and the UK – did, however, respond to prices. Declining prices in the 1950s and 1960s was therefore a significant factor in these two countries’ abandoning whaling. The decline in prices, in turn, was largely driven by cheaper substitutes for whale oil, such as palm oil. In other words, palm oil and other vegetable oils helped save the whales in the 20th century in the same way that kerosene helped save them in the 19th.