Illegal Whaling

Illegal whaling is the hunting of whales for meat, blubber and other products in continued violation of the whaling bans that took effect after commercial overexploitation depleted whale populations. The practice had been carried out as an organized commercial industry for centuries, and whale oil became an important industrial input during the Industrial Revolution, but the resulting depletion of some whale species to near extinction led individual countries to begin banning the practice by 1969, followed by an international cessation of whaling as an industry in the late 1980s; whaling carried on in disregard of those bans and any cessation constitutes the modern offense.