The Makah Indians from the United States harpooned a gray whale in the spring of 1999 to help keep their tribal fishing traditions alive. The tribe was able to hunt the whales under an exemption for indigenous people that was included in an international whaling ban imposed in 1986 by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to protect declining whale populations.

Norway and Japan have continued to whale commercially in spite of the IWC ban with little backlash save from environmentalists like Elaine Robbins. Robbins protests all whaling and points out that “seven of the eight whale species decimated by whaling are still on the Endangered Species List.” Those who are opposed only to commercial whaling cite the primary reasons for upholding the whaling ban are the difficulty of counting whales, monitoring whaling vessels, and predicting the environmental impacts...