捕鲸(whaling)
猎取鲸类以充当食物和提取油脂的行为。捕鲸活动可追溯到史前时代，当时北极区的人们利用石具来捕鲸。整只动物都利用到，这项技术一直到20世纪浮动工厂出现才得以完成。巴斯克是最早从事商业捕鲸的欧洲人，他们冒着风浪行驶很长距离到纽芬兰及冰岛沿岸。这样的横渡大西洋的航行早在1372年就已开始。在17世纪内，荷兰人及英格兰人均组成庞大的捕鲸船队。18世纪，因捕鲸船上安装了提炼炉，使捕鲸者在海上就能把宝贵的鲸脂提炼成油，并把鲸油贮存在桶里，不必把捕到的鲸拖回岸上再加工。有了这样的加工能力，捕鲸船通常便能在海上停留四年之久。由於石油的发现（1859）、过度捕杀等使得捕鲸业在19世纪末期日趋衰落，在20世纪，人们发现了鲸产品的新用途，於是捕鲸业便又稍得振兴，然而鲸的种群却面临绝灭的危险。1900～1911年间鲸鱼的捕杀从2,000只增加到20,000只以上。挪威和英国是20世纪中期主要的捕鲸国。因为现代捕鲸业捕杀的鲸数量巨大，所以在20世纪已受国际法规的约束，以使鲸的种族得以保存。国际捕鲸委员会（IWC）裁定自1986年开始暂停商业捕鲸，但少数国家（如日本、挪威等）有少数用於科学的捕鲸配额，以维持已缩减的捕鲸业存在，为「研究」而捕杀的鲸的肉可销售以取得利益。1992年6月冰岛退出国际捕鲸委员会。1994年国际捕鲸委员会禁止在非洲南部、澳大利亚和南美洲进行捕鲸活动。
English version：
whaling
Hunting of whales for food, oil, or both. Whaling dates to prehistoric times, when Arctic peoples used stone tools to hunt whales. They used the entire animal, a feat not accomplished by Western commercial whalers until the advent of floating factories in the 20th century. The Basque were the first Europeans to hunt whales commercially; when seaworthy oceangoing vessels began to be made, they took to the open seas (14th-16th cent). They were followed by the Dutch and the Germans in the 17th century and the British and their colonists in the 18th century. In 1712 the first sperm whale was killed; its oil proved more valuable than that of the right whale, which had hitherto been the object of whaling ventures. Whaling expeditions in pursuit of the free-ranging sperm whale could last for four years. The discovery of petroleum (1859), overfishing, vegetable oil, and steel-boned corsets led to a steep decline in whaling in the later 19th century, but Norwegian innovations made hunting the hitherto “wrong” whales (including the blue whale and the sei whale; so called because they sank when killed) commercially feasible, and the number of whales killed rose from under 2,000 to over 20,000 between 1900 and 1911. The Norwegians and British dominated whaling into the mid-20th century, when overfishing again made it unprofitable for most nations, though not Japan and the Soviet Union, which became the chief whaling nations. Concern over the near-extinction of many species led to the establishment in 1946 of the International Whaling Commission. Commercial whaling was prohibited altogether in 1986, but several nations, notably Japan, Norway, and the Soviet Union, initially refused to comply.