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Data

Number of whales killed globally per decade

About this data

Source
Rocha et al. and International Whaling Commission (2022) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
December 5, 2022
Date range
1900–2010
Unit
whales caught

Related research and writing

Global whaling peaked in the 1960s

Hannah Ritchie

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Rocha et al. and International Whaling Commission – Whale catch by decade

Data is presented as decadal totals where '1900' is equal to the total catch from 1900 to 1909; '1910' is from 1910 to 1919 etc. For the decade '2010', only the years 2010 to 2015 are currently included.

Data on whale catch is sourced from two sources:

Figures over the 20th century (1900-1999) is from: Rocha, R. C., Clapham, P. J., & Ivashchenko, Y. V. (2014). Emptying the oceans: a summary of industrial whaling catches in the 20th century. Marine Fisheries Review, 76(4), 37-48.

The above paper draws on data originally published by the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

Data from 2000 onwards is sourced directly from the International Whaling Commissions (IWC) which recorded the number of catches at: https://web.archive.org/web/20220613153315/https://iwc.int/public/downloads/8sXJb/Total_catches_since_1986.pdf

For the bowhead whale we source directly from the IWC from 1989 onwards.

Retrieved on
December 5, 2022
Retrieved from
https://web.archive.org/web/20220613153315/https://iwc.int/public/downloads/8sXJb/Total_catches_since_1986.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Rocha, R. C., Clapham, P. J., and Ivashchenko, Y. V. (2014). Emptying the oceans: a summary of industrial whaling catches in the 20th century. Marine Fisheries Review, 76(4), 37-48; and the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

Data is presented as decadal totals where '1900' is equal to the total catch from 1900 to 1909; '1910' is from 1910 to 1919 etc. For the decade '2010', only the years 2010 to 2015 are currently included.

Data on whale catch is sourced from two sources:

Figures over the 20th century (1900-1999) is from: Rocha, R. C., Clapham, P. J., & Ivashchenko, Y. V. (2014). Emptying the oceans: a summary of industrial whaling catches in the 20th century. Marine Fisheries Review, 76(4), 37-48.

The above paper draws on data originally published by the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

Data from 2000 onwards is sourced directly from the International Whaling Commissions (IWC) which recorded the number of catches at: https://web.archive.org/web/20220613153315/https://iwc.int/public/downloads/8sXJb/Total_catches_since_1986.pdf

For the bowhead whale we source directly from the IWC from 1989 onwards.

Retrieved on
December 5, 2022
Retrieved from
https://web.archive.org/web/20220613153315/https://iwc.int/public/downloads/8sXJb/Total_catches_since_1986.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Rocha, R. C., Clapham, P. J., and Ivashchenko, Y. V. (2014). Emptying the oceans: a summary of industrial whaling catches in the 20th century. Marine Fisheries Review, 76(4), 37-48; and the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Number of whales killed globally per decade”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Rocha et al. and International Whaling Commission. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Rocha et al. and International Whaling Commission (2022) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Rocha et al. and International Whaling Commission (2022) – processed by Our World in Data. “Number of whales killed globally per decade” [dataset]. Rocha et al. and International Whaling Commission, “Whale catch by decade” [original data]. Retrieved May 16, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

Download

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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whales-killed-per-decade.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear