The Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary is an area in the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

where the

International Whaling Commission The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is a specialised regional fishery management organisation, established under the terms of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) to "provide for the proper conservation ...

(IWC) has banned all types of commercial whaling. The IWC has at present designated two such sanctuaries, the other being the

Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary The Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is an area of 50 million square kilometres surrounding the continent of Antarctica where the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has banned all types of commercial whaling. To date, the IWC has designated two ...

. Repeated proposals at the IWC for a South Atlantic Sanctuary and a South Pacific Sanctuary have never reached the 75% majority needed to pass.

History

The Indian Ocean Sanctuary was established by the IWC in 1979 after being proposed by the tiny island nation of the

Seychelles Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (french: link=no, République des Seychelles; Creole: ''La Repiblik Sesel''), is an archipelagic state consisting of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, ...

, in its first meeting as an IWC member, partly in order to protect whales in their breeding grounds. The status of the Whale Sanctuaries is reviewed by the IWC every 10 years, and the Indian Ocean Sanctuary has so far been reviewed (and extended) three times, in 1989, 1992 and 2002.Whale sanctuaries

Area

The Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary extends south to 55°S latitude with a western boundary of 20°E longitude by Africa and an eastern boundary of 130°E longitude by Australia. To the south it borders the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

References

IWC page on the Southern Ocean and Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuaries

WWF: Successes and Failures of the IWC
via the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

Indian Ocean Whale sanctuaries {{Whale-stub