International Whaling Commission

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The body established under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, signed in 1946, that sets catch limits through amendments to its Schedule. Its record on blue whales is the whole ambiguity of the institution: it presided over the largest removal of the species while it was setting quotas, then protected blue whales from hunting from 1966, adopted the commercial moratorium in 1982 and the Southern Ocean Sanctuary in 1994. It also relied on catch returns filed by member states, which in the Soviet case were false. It is a regulator whose data came from the regulated.