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 One thing that I've been thinking a lot about since our discussion is the fact that the IWC doesn't seem to have made much of a difference when it comes to the number of whales being killed.  This makes me question the importance of conservation at all. We kept talking about how individual countries can't really be trusted to show restraint when whaling, which is one of the reasons that the IWC was created in the first place.  But how do we really know?  Now, I'm not saying that all conservation efforts are useless.  Instead, I think the IWC really needs to focus less on regulating whaling, and focus more on determining how many whales there actually are.  I feel that without a reasonably accurate population estimate, both currently and historically, there is no way to know whether or not conservation is needed.