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Japan's Whaling Shame
The Nisshin Maru, an 8,000-ton whaling factory ship, has been sailing southward from Japan for about two weeks and should arrive in its hunting grounds any day now: the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary off the coast of Antarctica.
The Japanese have been hunting whales in spite of a moratorium on commercial whaling enacted by the International Whaling Commission in 1986. And this year, for the first time in decades, they will target threatened humpbacks and endangered fin whales.
Since the moratorium began, Japan has exploited a loophole that allows member states to kill whales for scientific research. In 1987, the Japanese established the nonprofit Institute of Cetacean Research, under the supervision of the national Fisheries Agency, to conduct its research. To most observers this was a program designed to keep the whaling fleet afloat until the moratorium could be overturned.
Japan has been "researching" minke whales, sei whales, Byrd's whales and sperm whales in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific with great effectiveness, killing more than 25,000 whales in the process. The Japanese say they are studying stock structure, feeding behavior, etc. The meat is sold commercially. The International Whaling Commission's scientific committee has objected no fewer than 20 times, saying that Japan's research program lacks scientific rigor and would not hold up under peer review.
The Japanese will attempt to take 50 fin whales, which (like the sei and sperm whales) are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union and by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They also plan to hunt 50 humpback whales, the social and charismatic species that is a favorite of the billion-dollar worldwide whale watching industry. They're known for "songs" that can last up to 24 hours, and they travel across thousands of miles. A recent study by geneticists published in the journal Science estimates their pre-whaling population at 1.5 million. Today, humpbacks may number less than 30,000.
The killing of a whale by the most modern methods is cruel. An exploding harpoon, meant to kill quickly, rarely does more than rupture the whale's organs. The animal is winched to the side of the kill ship, a probe is jabbed into it and thousands of volts of electricity are run through it in an attempt to kill it faster, though it often takes 15 or 20 minutes for the whale to drown.
Why are the Japanese targeting these fragile species? Why are they whaling at all?
Surveys by the British polling firm MORI show that only 1% of Japanese regularly eat whale meat. Only 11% support whaling at all. More than 4,800 tons of surplus whale meat is being stockpiled in freezers. Last year, the five large seafood companies that owned the whaling fleet and operated it for the Institute of Cetacean Research divested and got out of whaling, citing poor consumer demand. They also stopped processing and selling the meat, leaving that to the government.
Japanese officials often decry the cultural imperialism of Western nations that hunt deer and slaughter cows and yet condemn Japanese whaling. They point to a long tradition of whaling in Japan and say they limit the hunt to a sustainable level -- about 1,400 whales this year.
I asked noted marine biologist Sylvia Earle what she thought of sustainable whaling. She responded: "Whales are long-lived, slow-growing wildlife, unlike domesticated animals that convert sunlight via plants to protein in less than a year. It defies logic to think that mobilizing large ships consuming large amounts of fuel with large crews traveling large distances to satisfy the tastes of a small number of consumers qualifies as a reasonable use of resources, let alone as a 'sustainable' enterprise."
But perhaps the real reasons the Japanese continue to whale have less to do with culture and more to do with fears about the imminent collapse of a major food source. Today's oceans are in great peril. We have lost 90% of the pelagic predator fish stocks -- marlin, tuna, swordfish, great sharks -- that existed in 1950. Half the world's reefs are dead or dying. A report published a year ago in Science warned that if the current trends of overfishing continue, every fishery will collapse by 2048.
The situation puts Japan in a desperate position. The Japanese depend on seafood for 40% of their protein. If they accept international regulation on whaling, strict controls on fisheries may follow. Joji Morishita, director for international negotiations for the Japanese government's Fisheries Agency, told The Times last week, "For many developing countries, whaling has become a symbol of who will dictate resource management."
Like fish, marine mammals the world over are struggling for survival. Resource management policies based on cultural traditions or national pride need to become a thing of the past. The oceans face a tenuous future. Right now is a good time for all of us to rethink how we use them.
Peter Heller is the author of "The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals."
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times
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24 Comments so far
Show AllThere was a japanese official who called whales the cockroaches of the seas or something to that effect. It is a bit surprising then again, Canada allows the slaughter of grizzly bears and seal cubs with a spiked club.
"Since the moratorium began, Japan has exploited a loophole that allows member states to kill whales for scientific research."
**you can always count on science to justify the worst of atrocities. Dissection, vivisection, genetic engineering, extinction...
"Japanese officials often decry the cultural imperialism of Western nations that hunt deer and slaughter cows and yet condemn Japanese whaling."
***
They are right to a certain extent--eating cattle and deer is also indefensible--pigs are very intelligent benign animals but they are taken for granted while whales are exotic.However, this doesnt excuse whaling either.
Cultural imperialism cuts both ways--the Japanese show cultural imperialism by believing they have a deity given right to attack and kill other species when it isnt necessary(unlike lions and natural predators).
"They point to a long tradition of whaling in Japan..."
**human slavery, war and rape have a long tradition too.
"But perhaps the real reasons the Japanese continue to whale have less to do with culture and more to do with fears about the imminent collapse of a major food source."
**it still has to do with culture in that they believe they are superior in value as a group to other lifeforms and act accordingly.
"For many developing countries, whaling has become a symbol of who will dictate resource management."
**developing countries with dismal human rights records or male dominated cultures are less inclined to be thinking at all about the lives of other animal species except as a resource. However, governments in supposedly enlightened societies tend to pay lip service to the same issues. The US and other countries have no use for whales anymore except as entertainment(in aquarium prisons).
What needs to change is the retarded infant notion that humans exist to "manage" nature. Just as we manage oil tankers, pollution, global warming etc.
Nature certainly has a warped sense of humor to create such a clown species as ours(misanthropy is the first antidote to the sickness called human supremacy).
Maybe I'm a strange person, but I believe that chasing down an innocent and extremely intelligent sea mammal, then slowly killing it with an explosive tipped harpoon, is no different than doing the same to a human child or baby. ___ Well, that's how I feel about it. You ever shot a deer and watched it's terrified eyes as it bled to death?
I know what to do,I'm forming a company to harvest floating scrap metal in the Antarctic,they are hard to gut as the parasites who inhabit the insides of those scrap floaters seems to want to hide*L*So when you guys finish hunting ALL the whales to extinction what next.Long Pork I hear there is an abundance in yer country and lots of Eastern countries
Read the story, "The Day They Killed The Pigs".
I hope the whales kill the hunters.
Meat is MURDER!! Save the whales, save the cows, save the pigs, save the chickens....
Go vegetarian, for yours and the animals health.
I don`t know about the whales but suppose the Japanese have some reason for what they are doing although it sounds rather unnessary. As for the cows, pigs, and chickens, what are we going to save them for as they will die in a few years anyway? Also, who wants to volunteer to feed them all until they die a natural death with no income from them? Most cows are well taken care of until time comes for them to become food for those horrible meat-eaters. I do not think pigs and chickens fare as well in their short lives as cattle do, however. I guess when all of those saved animals are running through the streets of the cities we will have a new problem.
Humans are truly a plague on this planet.
It is hard to kick the cultural addiction of meat-eating but it can be done.
And money eventually talks -- a boycott of Japanese products give some solace. I sent Toyota an e-mail telling them why I won't be buying a new car after all. (They replied that they can't control governmental policy, but maybe if they suffer from a drop in demand for their products they might be interested in working to change this attitude.) I also write to the Canadian Department of Tourism every spring telling them I won't travel to Newfoundland or Nova Scotia until the seal hunt is halted. And I haven't.
We have a brand new McDonalds going up in our town. Yumey-yum. Wonder if they serve whaleburgers in the Japanese McDonalds? Probably squidburgers and frog's legs McNuggets.
I always thought that shame was an important motivator in Japanese society. It seems not (these people also kill dolphins rounded up in nets). Where, I have wondered (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/77630/Whalebone_values.html) is the Japanese Thoreau, to bring shame to an entire country?
Too bad because Hondas and Toyotas are great cars I'll never buy until they stop killing cetaceans.
Yeah, they sure have a history of shame alright. The shame of Nanking China, the Battan Death March, the rail bridges in Thailand, where thousands of British soldiers were treated as bad as the Jews in German concentration death camps, beheading American prisoners of war, the utter brutality of the people of Korea and Manchuria. The thousands of Phillipino women who were forced to be sex slaves for their troops. The insane suicide attacks, no surrender for any reason. They have a history of attempting to show they are humble and kind. Actually th egeneral population are just like us, we humans are all the same. It is governments and leaders who are screwed up.
I'm getting just a weeeee bit tired that each time an article like this comes out the misanthropic hominid haters come out in droves. Look, short of a gamma ray burst or a super volcanic explosion it looks like H. sapiens is here for a while; deal with it. Stop self-flagellating and do something!
Simple solution. Boycott Japanese businesses and products until they stop. Put the pressure on them to put the pressure on their government to put the pressure on their whalers. Do it here in America!
Don't go to Japanese restaurants. Make reservations then cancel and tell them why. Don't buy Japanese cameras or cars or tvs or digital products ... and let them know why.
Can you do that? Pretty hard I know.
Otherwise whales die. Pretty simple really.
Smashette said:
"I hope the whales kill the hunters."
That is exactly what Moby Dick was trying to do. He was a "terrorist" leader of his kind. And Melville was also concerned that the whales might one day be completely wiped off the planet "...whether Leviathan ca long endure so wide a chase, and so at last be exterminated from the waters,and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff." Melville erroneously, it would seem, thought that man would never be able to breech what he thought to be the impregnable fortresses of the whale, the poles.
While the Japanese attitude towards these awesome intelligent creatures is vile and disgusting, it's on a par with American attitudes towards Chimpanzees. Americans believe that Chimpanzees should be exploited for entertainment (a brutal practice that starts with the traumatic separation of the chimp from his mother and ends when the Chimp is about six or seven because he becomes to hard for trainers to handle thus condeming a chimp in a cage for life!). Americans also believe that Chimps make good hairy furry test tubes in University labs throughout the country. Here's some news: 5 year old Chimps can outperform 5 year old humans when it comes to memorization! Americans, Japanese and all humans really need to rethink their superior human mentality and respect the majesty of these awesome creatures like whales, dolphins, and chimps. How would humans like it if a superior primate creature took over this Earth and hunted us down for bush meat and performed other despicable practices on our species?
According to Greenpeace, 70% of Japanese people are against whaling, and over 95% have not ever eaten whale meat.
The situation reminds me of how most Americans are against war in Iraq and torture, but the U.S. government proceeds with unpopular policies because of vested interests not aligned with the majority of citizens.
I have read that the Japanese "research" organization that is behind whaling is run by yakuza, and that killing whales is like a pork barrel project for the people in charge. Earlier this year, the head of this organization killed himself because his involvement with organized crime came to light.
I am hoping that non-Japanese investigative reporters will dig deeper into this story, because it's not about "Japan" versus the "world." Instead, it's about a small group of thugs in Japan who are killing whales and trying to force it down the throats of Japanese people and schoolchildren who don't want to eat it, despite attempts to hype it in the media.
These thugs are carry-overs from the fascist period -- same mentality, same violence.
It's dangerous for journalists in Japan to do the kind of investigative work needed to shed light on the actual perpetrators because organized criminals are so violent and vindictive. A Japanese filmmaker, Itami, was attacked and injured by yakuza when he turned his camera on them. Peace activist mayors have been shot by ultra-rightists involved with the yakuza.
There are huge divisions in Japan, between humanitarian peace and progressive activists (the ones Americans align with every year when the world commemorates Hiroshima and Nagasaki), those who want to remilitarize Japan, and the miniscule minority who want to kill whales they don't want to eat.
It's important for progressive Americans not to undermine the agency of progressive Japanese people on their side. This is a transnational conflict.
Errata: I said in an earlier post that 5 year old chimps can outperform 5 year old humans. I was incorrect. The recent test on Chimp memory demonstrated that 5 year old chimps can outperform 5th Grade human children (read 10, 11 year old homo sapiens)!!My apologies to the Chimps.
Is Greenpeace the only organization that cares about the destruction of whales?
This is a despicable act of terror against intelligent, peaceful, endangered animals.
I must admire the tenacity and courage of the Greenpeace crew trying to stop these murders.
It is pathetic that only a non-profit organization is attempting to stop these crimes, what happened to the rest of the world?
If Bush found out that Whales posses, in addition to all that desirable blubber, oil that burns, it would only worsen the situation, I guess it is better if Greenpeace handles this problem without help from the USA.
The Song of the Whale
"Heaving mountains in the sea,
Whale, I heard you
Grieving.
Great whale, crying for your life,
Crying for your kind, I know
How we would use
Your dying.
Lipstick for our painted faces
Polish for our shoes.
Tumbling mountain in the sea,
Whale, I hear you
Calling
Bird-high notes, soaring:
At their edge a tiny drum
Like a heartbeat
We would make you
Dumb
In the forest of the sea,
Whale, I heard you
Singing
Singing to your kind
We'll never let you be
Instead of life we choose
Lipstick for our painted faces,
Polish for our shoes."
By Sana Khan
SEQUOIA: we are on the same cosmic page. I planned to invite people (wish this would be mandatory for the Japanese who eat whale) to listen to Antonio Carlos Jobim's song with whale love songs so plaintive in the background, truly haunting. Did you know that one of those huge whales (forget which species) goes deep down under the sea and its call can circle the world? Or a very, very long distance...
KELMER: Very emotionally touching posting. I thought it would be an interesting story, shades of Eugene Ionesco, to pose a scene where one animal after another enters a shrink's office, gets comfortable in a chair, and enters into a therapy session that demonstrates savvy and sensitivity towards the continuum of life. So that the therapist's key question directed at each animal is WHY he/she chose that particular FORM in which to incarnate. Is a cow's life easier than a turkey's? We like to think only human beings have intelligence. That's such bull shit, even rocks have some form of sentience, all MATTER is endowed with qualities of the Creator. To me, the difference between organic and inorganic worlds comes down to the rate of vibration. Where I live I pass many cattle ranches and some of the setting are as pristine as those we'd see in a 19th century landscape painting. I compare that with cows I saw starving in the streets of India. The Buddhists believe animals also carry karma, and gain their relative states (shades of the children's book, "Rich cat, poor cat") from THEIR past experiences. Something to think about. And... no joke here, there's a film entitled, "The Advocate" based on historical fact, that the church really DID try animals for witchcraft several hundred years ago. It would give the Department of Homeland Security, Blackwater and the make-fear/war campaigners a whole new venue to practice their "art" in. Would elephants stampede the White House were they indigenous to this continent? (Just got back from a long trip, stream of consciousness in overdrive.)
This is funny. On today's CNN news program, they ran a story showing chimps doing a computer memory test and the chimps beat all of the college students pitched against them. Ironic that FOREXTRADER brought up that very subject here today.
In my view, any of the other animals are far, far better than all of us human animals combined!
Have never encountered, read or heard about a dumb animal except for human ones. :(
p.s. Heard it put this way once:
Man is the one and only animal that could go extinct on this planet and ALL other life (forms) would flourish in his/her absence.
That is something btw, which lends support to a point of view that we, the (particularly we modern) human animals are definitely NOT native/natural to this planet. Though part of us may have originated here and therefore belongs here, it truly seems that another part of us is literally ALIEN to earth. We are either wholly or partly an alien life form on this beautiful blue marble.
Besides, what else could explain our insane thinkings and disgraceful behaviour, particularly our genocidal and suicidal actions regarding not only other life forms here and our physical environment, but also regarding each other, including our own offspring.
!
Whales are carnivores which evolved from hooved, wolf-like land animals. They, like us humans, are hunters who kill to survive. As such, I'm sure that whales, were they intelligent enough, would happily build harpoons and use them extensively...
There is, of course, a legitimate issue of over-fishing and over-consumption. Human beings have irresponsibly over-indulged at the expense of the health of the global environment. But these proposals to boycott Japanese products to protest Whaling is beyond absurd. Should Japan boycott Intel microchips to protest McDonald's? Japan's environmental record beats the U.S. hands down several times over. They make the most fuel efficient cars on the planet...and they should be boycotted for this?
None of the current whaling countries (Japan, Iceland, etc.) were responsible for the endangerment of the species. That was the fault of the U.S. in the 18th-19th century, by far the biggest whale-killer. One can debate as to whether Japan's current practices are "cruel" - but there is no evidence that it is a threat to the survival of the species.
Likewise, there is a real debate to be had about the best way to manage our dwindling fish-populations, and changing dietary habits can be part of that debate.
But can we please drop this ridiculous equation of "nature" with "innocence," and "human" with "evil"? It's a misanthropic holdover of Christian mythos (sure lots of pagan traditions worship nature - but not as realm of helpless innocents!). The mainstream senses that the enviro left hates them, which why the enviro left has such trouble gaining public credibility, even when there's some science on their side.