At the heart of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act is the notion that marine mammal populations should be functional components of marine ecosystems. This worldview is not shared by some in other nations, the clearest example being the current Norwegian policy on marine mammal management. It is the perfect antithesis of the US MMPA – marine mammals should not be functional components of marine ecosystems. While to the US public, marine mammals have morphed from resources into something to be cherished, to Norwegians and Icelanders, they have gone from resources to pests - an equally profound change. Recent changes in the subsidies to some hunts, and regulations regarding others, demonstrate how this may play out in coming years. Further, the perception of marine mammals as pests influences the process by which granting agencies in whaling nations fund research, resulting in over a decade of support to a research program that, demonstrably, has failed to achieve its aim. This has led to calls for yet more support for this program, despite other Norwegian research on the same system (fisheries-cod-herring-capelin in the Barents Sea) that models the system reliably. The pernicious influence of collusion between all members of the establishment (in science, policy and management) that has allowed this situation to develop is demonstrated in some nations’ responses to calls for fisheries management to adopt an “ecosystem approach” by 2010.