What ever happened to Save the Whales?

[Guest guest]

What ever happened to " Save the Whales " ?

 

Source > http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200807/whales.asp

 

.... Through the transparent charade of " scientific whaling, " designed

to sidestep the global ban on commercial hunting imposed by the International

Whaling

Commission (IWC) in 1986, Japan is currently harpooning more than a thousand

minkes

annually. Over the years this " research harvest " has been expanded to

include 50 fin and 5 to 10 sperm whales. Late last year Japan announced its

intention

to add 50 humpbacks. But then Australia condemned the move and threatened to

send

planes and a patrol boat to monitor the Japanese whaling fleet, and the United

States

lodged an unusually strong complaint as well. In response, Japan delayed its

humpback

hunt for up to two years.

 

Norway, which simply ignores the IWC moratorium on commercial whaling, is also

killing

around a thousand minkes annually and is steadily increasing its take. Iceland

resumed

industrial whaling in 2006, quit in 2007 when too few shoppers proved interested

in buying steaks carved from warm-blooded submarines, but just announced plans

to

start again--despite the fact that whale-watching has become a

multimillion-dollar

industry in that nation. Greenland, a Danish territory, takes 187 minkes and 19

fin whales annually, along with hundreds of smaller narwhals and belugas, all

under

an IWC provision for " aboriginal subsistence whaling. " This aboriginal

hunting is done with modern weapons including grenade-tipped harpoons. (Even so,

the death agonies of the fin whales impaled with such lances last up to two

hours.)

Greenland's total kill appears to be so much higher than necessary for

subsistence

that experts are concerned it may be causing declines in Arctic whale

populations.

The

 

country is now lobbying to hunt humpbacks commercially.

 

Founded in 1946 by 15 whaling nations, the IWC has 78 member countries. Many

have

no history of whaling. Some, such as Mongolia and, more recently, Laos, lack

even

a seacoast (oddly, not a prerequisite of membership). This strange international

interest in whaling policy can be partly explained by Japan's use of foreign-aid

grants to entice other nations to join and support pro-whaling policies. By 2007

this faction had a one-vote edge. Fortunately, a wider majority is required to

overturn

the ban.

 

Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries insists that whale

flesh is an important source of food for its citizenry. Supply already exceeds

demand,

however, and investigators found companies rendering carcasses mainly for pet

food.

Japan likes to portray its whaling business as a cherished cultural tradition,

though

modern commercial whaling didn't start until 1898, and early Japanese whalers

paddled small wooden vessels close to the coast, not aircraft-carrier-size

factory

ships stalking distant seas as they do now. Finally, the ministry touts the

value

of whaling in helping fish populations, warning that the giants are vacuuming

them

up. In truth, the collapse of commercial fish stocks is fully explained by the

countless

nets sweeping the world's waters--many of them from Japan's enormous fishing

fleet. And most whales eat krill, plankton, and squid, not fish.

 

Why is Japan hell-bent on whaling? First seems to be a conviction that whales

and

dolphins are no different from fish and livestock; they're merely animals, and

meat's meat. Second is a playground-age mind-set: " I'm going to do

this because you told me not to. " Or, as grown-ups say, " It's a matter

of national pride. "

 

The more pointed question is, whatever happened to " Save the whales " ?

True, Greenpeace and other conservation groups continue to battle on behalf of

cetaceans.

Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society volunteers are still out

there

racing little inflatable skiffs between harpooners and their targets. (In a

confrontation

with the Japanese whaler Nishhin Maru last March, Watson reported being shot in

the chest and saved by his Kevlar vest. Japan said no gunshots were fired.) But

the general populace seems to have responded to the ongoing revival of whaling

with

a collective shrug. Yes, there was that flap over Japan's proposal to slaughter

humpbacks, the most commonly watched and popular of the great whales. And the

outcry

got results. But the effort stopped there, leaving the fin, sperm, and minke

whales

dead center in the harpooners' sights.

 

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200807/whales.asp