The Technical Committee has not met for several years but when it did meet the Scientific Committee used to provide advice on inter aliacommercial whaling catch limits. The broad Scientific Committee agenda is determined each year by the Commission. Other Commission bodies can request the advice of the Scientific Committee via the Commission. Occasionally, individual Commissioners ask the Committee for advice and this is dealt with if time permits.

Table 1:
Recent examples of the Scientific Committee first reporting to other bodies of the Commission

Commission body	Scientific Committee items
Aboriginal subsistence whaling sub-committee	Aboriginal subsistence whaling management procedure (AWMP), advice on aboriginal subsistence whaling catch limits
Budgetary sub-committee	Research fund proposals
Conservation Committee	Ship strikes
Finance and Administration Committee	Rules of Procedure changes

Member nations have the right to nominate national delegations to the Scientific Committee; there is no limit to the size of any delegation. Each country represented on the Scientific Committee nominates a Head of Delegation who has one vote, should voting be required. However, the Scientific Committee has wisely chosen not to use voting to ‘decide’ scientific matters (see section 5) and voting is not used apart from occasionally with respect to choosing a Chair and/or Vice-Chair (see section 3.2).

Invited participants (IPs) are non-voting members of the Scientific Committee. Although treated as one category, IPs fall into two broad categories:

1. those scientists that are identified by the Convenors (see Item 4.1.1) as providing necessary expertise for them to complete their work and for which funding will be provided by the IWC if available; and
2. those scientists who request to participate in meetings of the Scientific Committee, can provide the Chair of the Scientific Committee with information showing that they will contribute to the Committee’s work and have their own funding.

The timetable and process for invited participants is summarised below:

4 months prior	Convenors suggest IPs based on draft agenda/workplan. Other scientists may request to attend explaining their potential contribution to priority items
3.5 months prior	Chair in consultation with convenors and Secretariat develop list of IPs and invitation letter sent stating that funding may be available. If prospective IPs cannot obtain their own funding they are asked to submit estimated costs within two weeks. Governments are also asked if they will fund scientists on the list residing in their countries
3 months prior	Secretariat supply Chair with consolidated list of potential IPs and costs for decisions on funding based on priorities and consultations with convenors and Secretariat
2 months prior	IPs informed of outcome of funding requests

Although IPs can participate fully in the Committee’s scientific work, they are expected to use discretion with respect to ‘potentially controversial’ recommendations and/or those pertaining to the Committee’s procedures and policies. The Chair or sub-committee chair may identify such topics and may rule IPs out of order at his/her discretion.

3.1.3 REPRESENTATIVES OF SPECIFIED INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS

The Scientific Committee has a history of co-operation with a number of relevant IGOs (including FAO, UNEP, ASCOBANS, ACCOBAMS, CCAMLR etc) and, subject to confirmation by the Chair of the Scientific Committee, their representatives may attend as non-voting members. IUCN (which has both governmental and non-governmental members) is accorded the same rights.

To accentuate this, when presenting the results of the Scientific Committee’s work to the Commission, the Chair of the Scientific Committee sits with the Secretariat’s Head of Science and thus represents the Committee, not his/her national delegation. A list of Chair’s since the inception of the Committee is given in Table 2.

The primary tasks of the Chair of the Scientific Committee (usually in conjunction with the Vice-Chair and the Head of Science) are:

1. Annual Meeting related
   1. to develop the draft agenda for the annual Scientific Committee meeting and circulate it 60 days in advance;
   2. to integrate any comments received on the draft and circulate a revised draft agenda 21 days in advance for discussion and adoption at the opening plenary;
   3. to develop a timetable and modus operandii for the annual meeting for discussion and adoption at the opening plenary (see below);
   4. to appoint Convenors for sub-committees, standing working groups etc (see below);
   5. to approve invited participants, observers and local scientists (see 3.1.1);
   6. to Chair annual meetings;
   7. to present the work of the Scientific Committee to the Commission;
2. to determine the participation of the expert group to review special permits (see below);
3. to participate in the Data Availability Group (see below).

Table 2: Chairs of the Scientific Committee, 1950 onwards

Chair	Country	Years (based on annual meetings chaired)
N.A. Mackintosh	UK	1950-63
J.T. Ruud	Norway	1964
D.G. Chapman	USA	1965-74
K.R. Allen	Australia	1975-79
J.L. Bannister	Australia	1980-82
M.F. Tillman	USA	1983-85
G.P. Kirkwood	Australia	1986-88
R.L. Brownell Jr	USA	1989-91
P.S. Hammond	UK	1992-93
S.B. Reilly	USA	1994-96
J.L. Bannister	Australia	1997-99
J.E. Zeh	USA	2000-02
D.P. Demaster	USA	2003-05
A. Bjørge	Norway	2006-09
D. Palka	USA	2010-12
T. Kitakado	Japan	2013->

Some are ‘Standing’ and have been established on the instruction of the Commission, some are ad hoc, established for a particular item, whilst the majority are sub-committees that tend to appear consistently over a number of years with occasional major shifts (e.g. see Table 3). All of these are subservient to the whole. Sub-groups make recommendations to the Committee – it is the Committee that makes recommendations to the Commission. Occasionally, the full Committee does not agree with the conclusions or recommendations of a subgroup. Although this has been rare it is entirely proper – the Plenary is not obliged to rubber stamp a subgroup report or else discussions of such reports would be meaningless. How this is handled in reports is dealt with under Item 5.

The Chair decides on the appropriate sub-groups based on the workplan and finalises this in the notes to the draft agenda. As noted under Item 3.2, it is the Chair’s responsibility to appoint Convenors for each of the sub-groups; this requires a balance of a number of features including experience, geographical spread, a balance of the need for new blood with the need for continuity (more important in some groups than others). Participants select which sub-groups they plan to attend during online registration.

Table 3: Example of sub-groups: 2012 Annual Meeting
(S-C = sub-committee; SWG = standing working group; WG = working group)

Title	Convenor	Type
Revised Management Procedure	Bannister	S-C
Development of an Aboriginal Subsistence Management Procedure	Donovan	SWG
Bowhead, Right and Gray Whales	Kitakado	S-C
In-depth Assessments	Walløe	S-C
In-depth assessment of western North Pacific common minke whales with a focus on ‘J’ stock	Hammond	WG
Other Southern Hemisphere whale stocks	Robbins	S-C
Stock Definition	Jackson	WG
Estimation of bycatch and other human-induced mortality	Leaper	WG
Environmental Concerns	Moore	SWG
Address multi-species and ecosystem modeling approaches	Palacios	WG
Small Cetaceans	Fortuna	S-C
Whalewatching	Urban-Ramirez	S-C
DNA	Pastene	WG
Special Permits	Bjørge	WG

4.1.1 THE ROLE OF CONVENORS

The Convenor’s responsibilities can be summarised as follows:

1.  to facilitate intersessional progress on identified tasks including providing advice to the Chair as appropriate;
2. to identify potential invited participants;
3. to draw up the draft agenda for the sub-group’s work for discussion and agreement at an organisational meeting of the sub-group;
4. if elected chair (as is normally the case) by the sub-group at its opening meeting:
   1. to meet in the Convenors’ group to determine the business and timetable for the day
   2. to provide advice to the Chair on other meeting-related matters should they arise;
   3. to chair the sub-groups meetings efficiently and fairly and  if necessary establish small expert groups;
   4. to authorise working papers should they be deemed necessary (see below);
   5. to appoint rapporteurs and ensure the sub-group’s report follows the guidelines for reports, to present the sub-group report to the full Plenary and to provide an initial draft for the relevant sections of the Plenary report;
   6. ‘To develop with other members of the Convenors’ Group a prioritised list for funding that should to be made available to the full Committee at least by 6pm on the penultimate day of the Scientific Committee Annual Meeting.
   7. to ensure that the final version of the sub-group report is completed by the end of the day after the Scientific Committee meeting;
   8. to meet in the Convenors’ group the day after the Scientific Committee meeting to finalise the  draft workplan for the coming year to be submitted to the Commission.

4.1.2 ELIGIBILITY OF CONVENORS AND CO-CONVENORS

‘All Committee members are eligible to become Convenors or co-convenors. A co-convenor may be appointed to assist the Convenor of a sub-group, gain experience in chairing and learn Committee procedures. Requirements include appropriate scientific background and/or chairing experience, knowledge of Committee procedures and appropriate communication skills.-

The workload of the Committee is such that simultaneous sessions must be held; whilst every attempt is made by the convenors to avoid clashes of sub-groups with overlapping personnel, it is not always possible. In 2009, the aim was to have a scheduled 105 sessions (three concurrent sub-group meetings for each of five work sessions per day, starting at approximately 08:30 and ending typically at 18:00) but with the possibility of evening sessions. However, if possible, evening sessions are avoided to allow: (1) rapporteurs to draft reports; (2) time for small break out groups (e.g. to do simulation runs and testing); and (3) dedicated sessions on particular topics that can be attended by all. Full details of the 2009 Schedule can be found here.

Table 4: Example time schedule for an Annual Scientific Committee meeting: 2009

Date	Items	Comments
Sunday 31st May	Plenary session, then read documents	Items 1-4
Monday 1st June	Initial meetings of sub-committees and working groups (about 15 minutes each)	To elect chairs and adopt agenda, identify documents, etc
Tuesday 2nd June Monday 8th June	Predominantly sub-committees (possibly some short plenary meetings)	To complete agenda and agree report
Tuesday 9th June	Tentative rest day	Subject to cancellation if insufficient progress is made….
Wednesday 10th Friday 12th June	Plenary sessions. Intention to finish no later than 5pm on Friday 12th June	To complete agenda and agree report, including work plan and draft initial agenda for 2010
Saturday 13th June	Convenors to complete editorial work on sub-committee and plenary reports; consider refinements of the draft initial agenda, priorities, and changes in organisational structure implied by the draft initial agenda or by discussions during the meeting.

As a result of problems in the past the Committee has agreed to pay careful attention to drafting clear terms of reference and responsibilities, and in the case of type (2) groups, establish a process to follow in the event of disagreement within the group (e.g. consultations with the Chair and Convenors’ group). Experience has shown, however, that intersessional correspondence groups are rarely a substitute for face-to-face meetings on complex topics for a number of reasons, including the workload of members.

5.1 NATIONAL PROGRESS REPORTS

Scientific Progress Reports have their origin in Article VIII, Paragraph 3 of the Convention.  All member nations are urged by the Commission to provide Progress Reports to the Scientific Committee following the most recent guidelines developed by the Scientific Committee and adopted by the Commission.  The report is intended as a concise summary of the cetacean research undertaken in member countries as well as a summary of information on direct and incidental anthropogenic mortality. An online submission system has been developed. Country representatives are informed directly on how to use this facility. For further information contact IT Support

5.2 SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE PRIMARY PAPERS

Primary scientific papers (not ‘For Info’ papers – see below) should be submitted to the Committee following an agreed template and style. Authors are requested to submit at least preliminary titles, authors and ideally an abstract about 6 weeks before the meeting using an online system. Papers are allocated document numbers and categories by the Secretariat. Table 5 presents examples of categories of papers. Primary papers must be submitted by the end of the first day of the Annual Meeting. Under special circumstances, the Chair in consultation with the Head of Science may either extend this deadline or agree to upgrade a working paper (see 5.4 below) to the status of a primary paper and allocate a document number.

For financial and environmental reasons, primary papers will be distributed wholly electronically on the IWC website and on memory sticks.

Table 5: Categories of Papers presented to the Scientific Committee

Category	Title	Description
AWMP	Aboriginal Whaling Management Procedure	Papers mainly relevant to the AWMP, the Greenlandic Research programme and aboriginal subsistence whaling by Greenland and St. Vincent and The Grenadines
BC	Bycatch	Papers mainly relevant to the issue of estimation of bycatch
BRG	Bowhead, right and gray whales	Papers relevant to these species, including stocks subject to aboriginal subsistence whaling that are not directly related to the AWMP process
E	Environmental Concerns	Papers mainly relevant to environmental concerns
EM	Ecosystem Modelling	Papers relevant to the Ecosystem Modelling working group
IA	In-depth Assessments	Papers mainly relevant to Antarctic minke whale assessments, SOWER cruises, IWC-DESS, sperm whales
JR	JARPN II Review	Revised JARPN II review papers and response papers
NPM	Western North Pacific common minke whales	Papers relevant to the in-depth assessment of western North Pacific common minke whales
RMP	Revised Management Procedure	Papers relevant to general RMP matters and Implementations or Implementation Reviews
SCP	Scientific Committee Process	Papers relevant to the working methods of the Scientific Committee including improvements to the review process for Scientific Permits and Sanctuaries
SD	Stock Definition/DNA	Papers mainly relevant to Stock Definition, including general stock identity issues TOSSM and those related to the issue of DNA testing
SH	Southern Hemisphere assessments	Papers mainly relevant to the assessment of  Southern Hemisphere humpback and blue whales
SM	Small Cetaceans	Papers mainly relevant to small cetaceans
WW	Whalewatching	Papers mainly relevant to whalewatching
O	Other	Papers that do not fall easily into one of the above categories

Similar rules apply to primary papers submitted to workshops although the deadlines may be more tolerant.

Submission of primary papers does not preclude publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals (or indeed elsewhere), although they reside in the Secretariat, are publicly available on request and are considered part of the public domain. The Committee has agreed that authors may put the following text on the title page of their manuscripts – it will automatically be put on the website downloads pages for primary papers:

‘Papers submitted to the IWC Scientific Committee are produced to advance discussions within that Committee; they may be preliminary or exploratory. It is important that if you wish to cite this/a paper outside the context of an IWC meeting, you notify the author at least six weeks before it is cited to ensure that it has not been superseded or found to contain errors.’

5.3 FOR INFORMATION PAPERS

This category is for papers that have been: submitted to a journal, are in press, or have been published; or have been submitted to another meeting (IWC or elsewhere) and allocated a document number. This is primarily to avoid confusion at a later date. Standard sets of ‘For Info’ papers are available for consultation at meetings and convenors may request hard copies of such papers they consider especially relevant to their business (copyright permitting).

5.4 SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE WORKING PAPERS

Working papers are intended to expedite resolution of disagreements or stimulate debate within the meeting. They are only distributed with the agreement of the chair of a sub-group or the plenary. Recognising that such papers are often written at the last minute in order to stimulate discussion or present the results of a preliminary analysis which subsequently the author feels (or is told) is flawed, it has been agreed that they officially disappear at the end of the meeting unless appended to the Committee or sub-committee reports with the author’s permission, or with the agreement of the Chair and the Head of Science, be upgraded to a primary paper (see 5.2 above). Any working paper that forms the basis of management advice must be appended. Non-appended working papers have no status once the meeting is closed and thus cannot be cited in primary papers or publications (or the report of the Committee or one of its sub-groups).

When considering whether to upgrade a working paper to a full paper, the Chair and Head of Science will apply the following criteria:

1. the working paper has been presented and discussed within a sub-group or the plenary, such that the opportunity to comment on it has been given; and
2. the text of the sub-group or plenary report would be significantly improved, streamlined or clarified by the ability to reference the paper as a primary document.

5.5 SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE REPORTS (INCLUDING SUB-GROUPS/WORKSHOPS)

The Scientific Committee report is the public face of the work of the Committee. It has to serve a number of functions providing a concise yet comprehensive account of the scientific work undertaken for the benefit of (1) the participants; (2) scientists not attending the meeting; and (3) the Commission. Achieving this in the short period of time available is not easy (the Commission is discussing the possibility of separating the meetings of the Scientific Committee and the Commission which, if agreed, would allow more time to finalise the report). The Scientific Committee report and Annexes (primarily the work of the sub-groups) is extensive comprising in some years over 400 published pages in JCRM – that wording must be agreed by all participants. A primary component of the plenary report is a summary of the work of the sub-groups. When reporting the work of the sub-groups each Convenor provides a draft of what could comprise the main Committee discussions of those topics – while it is not common for the Plenary session to radically alter conclusions reached in sub-groups, this can happen. As noted above (Item 4), the Plenary is the ultimate body to decide the Committee’s view.

In terms of reporting, if the Plenary as a body disagrees with the conclusions of a sub-group, this is handled quite simply by (1) explaining the reasons for the change in the Plenary report and (2) including a footnote to the relevant section of the subgroup report.

 However, at various times in its history, the Committee has struggled with how to deal not with major changes by the Committee but rather with comments by an individual or small group of individuals.  The concern has been that by including such comments in the full Plenary report, they are effectively ‘given far greater weight than similar comments made in the sub-committee itself.

Given this, the Committee agreed (in 2004) that:

1. every attempt is made to achieve consensus on subgroup conclusions and recommendations – in particular sufficient time must be made available for a full presentation to the Committee of major issues in a sub-committee report (e.g. development of a new SLA, provision of catch limits, modifications to annotations to the RMP);
2. if the Chair rules that there is insufficient time to debate an issue, this must be clearly stated before discussion starts or during the discussion and reflected in the Plenary report;
3. general discussion that does not alter subgroup conclusions or recommendations shall be briefly reported along the lines of ‘There was additional discussion of the conclusions/recommendations but the Committee endorses the view of the subgroup.’ Statements under individuals names should not be allowed in the body of the report but they may request to have a statement included in a ‘Minority Annex’ – the Plenary report will merely record that ‘a minority statement (or statements)  is (are) given in Annex Z.’
4. if the general discussion results in the Committee being unable to agree as a body to a conclusion /recommendation, the report will reflect the discussion with a brief rationale under ‘Some…. Others …Yet others’ culminating with a statement that ‘under such circumstances, the Committee was unable to endorse the sub-committee conclusion/recommendation.’

Rapporteurs play an important role in report writing. Informal guidelines for rapporteurs have been developed and they can be found here.

The Rules of Procedure deal with the availability of reports. In summary, the Annual Meeting report, Reports of Special Committee Meetings (and sometimes intersessional Workshops) are confidential until they sent by the Secretary to the full Committee, Commissioners and Contracting Governments and/or made available on the website. Confidentiality does not preclude Committee members discussing the report with their Commissioners but rather the outside world. Reports of intersessional Steering Groups or sub-committees are confidential until they have been discussed by the Scientific Committee, normally at an Annual Meeting.

Most of the research supported by the IWC arises from discussions at annual meetings of the Committee. However, the Committee can accept applications developed by sub-committees for funding for research projects, the objectives of which are to advance the work of the Committee following a pro forma given here. In addition the Committee may consider and accept outside research proposals following the pro forma given here. 

For 2012/13, the research budget is £314,984. Details can be found under Item 23 of the Scientific Committee report. There is also a Voluntary Fund For Small Cetaceans Conservation Research. Details can be found here.

In addition, the Committee has a procedure to consider applications for the use of acoustic data, tissue samples or photo-identification photographs.

The Scientific Committee’s review has concentrated on the following issues, whether:

• the permit adequately specifies its aims, methodology and the samples to be taken;
• the research is essential for conservation and management, the work of the Scientific Committee or  other critically important research needs;
• the methodology and sample size are likely to provide reliable answers to the questions being asked;
• the questions can be answered using non-lethal research methods;
• the catches will have an adverse effect on the stock;
• there is the potential for scientists from other nations to join the research programme.

The Committee inevitably includes the scientists who are proposing the permit and the usual way that the review was carried out was for all scientists to be present for discussions although the comments of the proposers and the rest of the Committee are identified in the report. As one might expect with such a large group of scientists, the review of any permits rarely resulted in unanimity either in favour or against the scientific merit of the proposal. The published reports of the Scientific Committee have reflected the agreements and disagreements of the review process, for both new and continuing permits, eg. JCRM 10. pp341-42; JCRM 11. p64.

In an attempt to improve the review process for both new permit proposals and periodic review of results of ongoing or completed programmes, in 2009, the Committee proposed a new approach that was accepted by the Commission. The primary change involved the initial review of a new proposal, or interim and final reviews of permit programmes at a small specialist workshop with a ‘limited but adequate’ number of invited experts (The ‘Panel’) who may or may not be present members of the Scientific Committee. A limited number of scientists associated with the proposal can attend the workshop in an advisory role, primarily to present the proposal and answer points of clarification and not to participate in the discussion of the Panel. The practical way this was implemented at the first meeting this process (a review of the ongoing JARPNII programme) was that proponents provided brief presentations of their documents to the Panel in the morning session and answered questions of clarification; for the rest of the day the Panel was left alone to discuss the results and develop its report. In addition, Scientific Committee members are allowed to submit documents/analyses and attend open sessions as observers.The detailed process is given here. The report, along with comments made upon it by the Scientific Committee at its Annual Meeting, are submitted to the Commission.

Under this Agreement, there are two procedures. Procedure A applies to data required for the RMP, the AWMP or to provide advice on aboriginal subsistence whaling catch limits before the relevant Strike Limit Algorithms have been completed. Procedure B applies to data other than catch limits required for analyses deemed important in providing advice to the Commission (e.g. on the status of stocks not subject to IWC regulated whaling). Under Procedure A, there are deadlines for papers using those data to be submitted to the Scientific Committee, which depend on whether they use standard or novel methods and whether they are a new analysis or a response to such an analysis.

Summaries of the available data are listed here.   There are agreed protocols for approaching certain organisations for data available under Procedure B.  Applications for such data must be copied to the DAG. For the successful operation of the agreement, certain conditions must be met that ensure the rights of the data holders as detailed in the data availability rules. An example standard agreement letter is available here.