☆ENGLISH ONLY☆コミュのSimple questions about whaling

> 1: What is exactly BAD about whaling?

I'm no expert, but I think you'd find that most anti-whaling people would reply that the international and scientific community believe many species to be endangered or overfished. I don't think serious people would claim it has anything to do with being wise or cute or whatever.


> 2: If killing wise animals is bad, and that's WHY whaling is bad, then why is it reasonable to kill other animals like cow and pig?

I believe this is a straw-man argument. If someone thinks whaling is bad because whales are wise, maybe they can answer.


> 3: Is there any information we Japanese don't know about this?

"The Cove" was about dolphins, not whales?

Hello.
The Cove is about killing dolphins.

What's wrong with killing whales is that many people believe they are endangered & killing them could make them extinct.
We farm pigs & cows. They are domestic animals.
Kangaroos are culled.
If Japan could farm whales, then there would not be a problem.
The reason Australia gets so angry is that they believe the area the whales are caught in is Australian territory waters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Antarctic_Territory

As it says in the link, the territory is only recognized by 4 states so Australian government can't stop the hunting.

Whaling was traditional in whaling towns of Japan in Japan's waters. The whales that used to migrate to the Japan Sea have basically been wiped out (probably from over hunting).

Saying something that is traditional is not an excuse.
Some African countries have a tradition of circumcising girls.
They remove the clitoris so women don't feel pleasure during sex & wont cheat on their husbands.
Should that be allowed to continue in the name of tradition?

Japan has carried on a lot of traditions but whaling is not done in the traditional way but on a commercial scale.
Return whaling to it's original form using small wooden boats & hand held spears & then you can call it a tradition.

I have tried to put this as simple as possible so there is no confusion & none is meant to offend.
Please feel free to ask me anything further on any part of this subject & I will answer without getting abusive.

The cove isn't about whaling it's about catching dolphins for
both the aquarium and the food market.
In regards to whaling there is nothing intrinsically wrong with
hunting sea animals for food, but there are a few issues that
are particular to whaling.

First of all, I would say that how the animal is killed needs to be
humane. At the moment the way whales are killed is not humane.
It can take up to 30 or even 40 minutes for the animal to die.

In regards to whaling being a Japanese tradition, well it might
be a tradition to go out in boats when a whale ventures close
to a coastal town and hunt it, but large scale commercial whaling
in the Southern Ocean is not a Japanese tradition.
The modern Japanese whaling industry was created by the U.S.
Occupation Forces after WW2. They had people to feed a lot
of boats they didn't need, so they put the two together and
modern commercial whaling was born.

Don't get me wrong. I support limited commercial whaling of
specific non-endangered species but the Japanese whaling
lobby aren't really being honest in their arguments. To be honest
we should put Sea Shepherd and the Whaling Industry in a
room together and see who can tell the biggest lie.

Also, everyone must also understand that dolphins and whales contain a toxic amount of mercury in their meat due to oil spills and other such pollutants that the humans have done to their home. Consuming their meat in modern days is becoming something that is detrimental to future health.

I am not an expert on this, but it should be known about this fact, because I have heard that this meat is often provided free at schools, basically, they are feeding your children poison. Just needed to get that out. (also, I am a biology major, so I know about this field :D )

I agree with Kuri also, and feel that if it were possible for Japan to actually farm whales and dolphins, I would say, go ahead and poison yourselves, its not my business. (that is if they were farming in the ocean) But, they are hunting from the ocean, which is connected to almost every country. I hate to say it, but animals move around, they don't stay in so and so's water 100% of the time, so, yea, that means they could be killing off Australian dolphins and whales. Maybe Japanese fishermen killed off the whales and dolphins that go to their waters, or maybe, they scared them off, because whales and dolphins are actually smart and maybe they got the notion that going back to Japanese waters meant death. (FYI: there are studies of dolphin's intelligence to lead researchers and trainers to believe dolphins are as smart or even smarter then humans)

I personally say leave them alone, because we are the hunters of the land and they are the hunters of the water. Maybe Japanese people needed to hunt whale during the times that they didn't have meat readily available in Japan, but I know that now they have meat available, my friend works for a dairy/beef company in Japan. I say yay to killing and eating domesticated and farmed animals, do don't think I am a vegetarian.

Also, yea its a tradition, but you know what, the circumcision done in Africa reminded me of something I read in the paper the other day. They are debating weather circumcision in the US will be banned for boys without their consent. Its something I have personally been waiting to see for a while, damn the Churches who started this tradition and basically made everyone feel that if you didn't circumsize your child's private area that he would get diseases and issues later on in life. Traditions are good, as long as they benefit the greater good. That's why I don't think whaling/ hunting dolphins is good. If they knew the lifestyle of the dolphin, if they did so in a way that they could replenish their population without difficulty, if they didn't disrupt natural breeding patterns and feeding patterns, and if the consumption of the meat was actually not poisonous, then yes, I would be for it. However, those are a lot of requirements that are yet to be filled.

Also, a note about the footage being taken without permission. Just so you know, a lot of documentaries take footage without permission. If they did it with permission, it wouldn't really be considered a documentary if it was concerning a heated topic. (IE: the woman and children slave trade) Basically, if it was given consent to take this footage, the Japanese people hunting would have changed their methods temporarily to give an altered vision of the truth, to hide what really went on. It would be the same way in the slave trade and don't try to tell me otherwise.

Oh, I just thought of something to add. You said what is wrong with killing whales/dolphins when its ok to kill cows and pigs.

Cows and pigs are a group of animals that are domesticated, their deaths are quick and administered in a facility that is humane.

Whales and dolphins are wild animals and cannot be compared to domestic animals. However, you can compare them to other wild animals, and for that, I am going to give you the example of the American buffalo. You can say, it was tradition for Native Americans to hunt buffalo, and look what happened. They are gone in the wild. Buffalo aren't roaming everywhere like they once did and now are so limited in population that they are more numerous in farms then in their natural environment. The remainder of the long ago buffalo are found in the modern day watered down buffalo. They are totally different then the olden days (basing my findings off pictures of old and my own viewing of buffalo today). Because of the outrageous hunting that went on, we lost our tradition. (I am part Native American, btw) And now, you want that to happen to the whales? If you want tradition, take care to preserve it, through and through and don't go crazy and kill it off at its root.

5&6: UF獣医

A couple of things I disagree with. I have a great deal of
respect for skilled hunters who kill a wild animal to eat.
For one thing a wild animal undergoes a great deal less
stress in it's daily life. A captive, penned animal which
is bred for the meat industry suffers a life of constant
and unremitting stress.
A skilled hunter will kill an animal very quickly usually
with a single shot and will generally only kill what they
will eat.
Another point worth making is a hunter or a fisherman
sees the environment they are taking the animal from.
They know if the stream is polluted, if the trees are
healthy etc.. They can see the environment so perhaps
more than someone who buys meat that has been
sprayed red to look nice, they know the quality of the
food they are eating.

I'm not really sure about this but you seem to be implying
that Native Americans caused the near extinction of
buffalo through their hunting practises. I'm not really
up on American history but my impression has always
been it was white people who over-hunted the buffalo.

Ian

Native Americans did contribute to the buffalo's downfall, but they weren't the biggest contributor, no. But essentially, it was overhunting.

I am not against hunting, but I am against outright overhunting. I never said I was against hunting ever. I just want it done in a way that you don't kill off entire populations. And, I highly doubt that commercial hunting, like these whalers, really have a deep found respect for the animal, given the way they ruthlessly kill them without any thought of a quick and easy death.

8>
Just going to weigh in here. I believe that Ian is essentially correct.
It is my understanding that white settlers hunted buffalo for food, and did so unsustainably; later, when the whites were trying to develop tactical solutions to get rid of the Native American population, they slaughtered tens of thousands of buffalo in order to deprive the Native Americans of food.


As for whaling: I think enough has been said here already. Humane treatment of (intelligent) animals aside, I fail to understand what 'research' benefits are actually being yielded by the Japanese scientists through the killing of these creatures. Why their deaths are necessitated eludes me. I do hold that if you intentionally kill an animal, you should ensure that its death is meaningful--and one way of doing that is by using it for food and other materials, wasting as little as possible. In that respect I am glad that the Japanese use the whales for food.

However, I reiterate: what is actually being learned that could not be obtained by other, non-lethal, means? Australian scientists recently launched their own 'whale study' in an effort to demonstrate that (more) meaningful data may be produced without harm done to these creatures.

Perhaps it's all about ambergris.

What you guys are talking about now is that the system is broken. In principle it ought to be possible and straightforward to hunt whales sustainably, but in practice Japan doesn't follow rules because it believes them to be punitive and the international community passes punitive rules because it believes Japan will break them. Negotiation can never work if each side expects the other to be dishonest.

Ethics in Asia, in general, are particularly lax. Honesty is an issue only when everything is transparent. And very little is transparent in Japan. They know what they are doing to the dolphins is wrong and that is why they keep it hidden. What we as humans do to the dolphins in "general" is also wrong. But what we do to each other is even worse.......... Face it. No animal stands a chance if we can`t even stop killing each other.

thank you all for the comments, i'll reply when my stuff is done. sorry.

Ethics in Asia.. when judged by Western standards? Then again the Japanese are quick to point out the lack of ethics in the rest of Asia, so...

What is tradition?
Australia used to have a White Australia policy where they only let white people into the country.
Australia also removed half Aboriginal/white children from their parents.
The UK used to go around the world conquering other countries.
The Japanese used to fly kamikaze planes into ships.
Can we call these a "tradition" & allow it to continue?
I know I am stretching the meaning but I hope you get my point.

You're right. Every country should have an identical culture so as to not offend anybody else.

さぃ…

That is not what was said. I never would expect Japanese to give up tea ceremonies, festivals, holidays, individual way of life unless they made that decision on their own.

Same with I wouldn't expect English to give up drinking tea, Irish to give up drinking or their fiddles, or the whole world to adapt a set universal age to adulthood and maturity.

There is a limit however, what a country should be able to do and what they can do because of maintaining peace between nations. Right now, there is just a petty conflict between nations about rights to this or that, and what people to do.

Do you want to start another war? Do you want massive atomic bombs to be dropped again? I thought the world learned a lesson from stupid US and its own use. And that was before it was as refined as it is now. I am sure the whole world would be blown away then, and what do you say then? You wouldn't because you would be dead.

Ooh, the World Whale Wars!

Is the Sea Shepherd now representing the Australian Marines?

The US is gonna drop the atomic bomb again because of whales!?

+You're right. Every country should have an identical culture so as to not offend anybody else.+

That is really twisting my words around.