Commercial whaling continues in Iceland and Norway despite the IWC moratorium, with the welfare of individual whales during prolonged and painful death raising serious ethical concerns.
Commercial whaling welfare is unambiguous on one dimension: exploding harpoon technology does not reliably deliver instant death to large whales. A significant proportion of struck whales die slowly over minutes to more than an hour -- conscious, injured, and unable to escape. This is among the most protracted killing methods used on any large mammal anywhere in the world. Whales are highly intelligent, long-lived, socially complex animals with relationships spanning decades. The combination of sentience level, duration of suffering, and population-level conservation concerns makes commercial whaling one of the most ethically contested practices in the global animal welfare landscape.