The following general features of effective regulation and management were offered to the meeting and agreed to be useful.
It was recognised that in regulating whale watching, managers faced the problem of balancing the negative impacts of whale watching, usually the possible disturbance of the whales involved, against the benefits, the creation of employment, generation of revenue, raising of public awareness and education. These positive aspects of whale watching could be maximised by running efficient operations and ensuring that effective public awareness, education and conservation programs were prominent. The first step towards minimising disturbance is the adoption of appropriate regulations and codes of conduct. It was agreed that the best whale watching experiences were provided by whales which were not disturbed so that adhering to appropriate codes of conduct will generally result in better whale watching for the public as well as less disturbance of the animals.
Field experience has shown that approaching sperm whales from the rear causes the least disturbance. This may be because the whales then have an obvious avenue for escape ahead of them.
Since the disturbance caused by vessels approaching sperm whales depends on their proximity, the workshop decided that it would be useful to consider two crucial ranges defining three regions:
Maximising these ranges will increase protection of whales from disturbance due to vessel approach, but might result in unacceptable limitations on the ability of the observers to view the whales. Thus compromises were sought which, in the opinion of the participants, gave both acceptable opportunities to the whale watchers and reasonable protection of the whales from disturbance. Regulations and guidelines should, in some respects, be different for large males at high latitudes and groups of females.