Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
A sting in the whale tale?
Ask many Japanese about whaling and they explain it’s part of their culture. After all, Japan is surrounded by the ocean and whaling and fishing have been part of Japan for many centuries.
During a recent visit to Japan, several Japanese friends and colleagues were puzzled, indeed annoyed, by Western media coverage of Japan’s scientific whaling in Antarctic waters earlier this year and thought the stories were hostile and uninformed.
To them, stopping whaling would be akin to Australians being forced to stop summer barbecues, Inuits from hunting seals, or Germans from drinking beer during Oktoberfest.
But to many Westerners, the images of whales being harpooned under the guise of science means the practice should be stopped, particularly since some of the meat ends up for sale in special whale meat shops and restaurants in Japan.
What do you think? Are anti-whaling nations such as Australia being hypocritical when thousands of iconic kangaroos are culled each year, as some in Japan point out?
Will,
The Japanese believe as a result of their government funded research that neither the Humpback whales or Fin whales are endangered anymore (these species have both been protected since the 1960′s and 1970′s respectively). They would not be hunting them again now if they thought there was a serious risk that hunting them could drive them to extinction. If Australia doesn’t like it it should start funding it’s own research programmes, and prove that the numbers are lower than what the Japanese think they are. Japan is not North Korea, and just screaming out “liar” isn’t going to convince them that Australia has a rational opposition to whaling.
Whales being wild animals is no rational justification for their complete protection, tuna and other fish are also wild, so too are kangaroos, but Australia accepts that slaughtering them for food (and subsequent export) is alright.
What matters is sustainability. This goes for farmed animals too – you can’t suddenly breed new cows and pigs if you already slaughtered your entire stock last season. Wild animals breed naturally without human interference, so we have to ensure that the number we take does not exceed the natural capacity of such stocks of animals to replenish themselves.
As for Migaloo, it’s just a white humpback whale, not his own species. If Australians have given him a special “status” for being a white humpback instead of a black one, that’s something for Australians to rationally justify to themselves. The fact is that he’s just a humpback, and the chances are like that like the rest of the members of his species, he’ll die of natural causes.