Japan Defends Scientific Value of New Plan To Kill 333 Minke Whales (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes with news that Japan plans on killing 333 minke whales this year as part of their whale research program in the Antarctic Ocean. "We did our best to try to meet the criteria established by the ICJ and we have decided to implement our research plan because we are confident we have completed our scientific homework," Joji Morishita, the nation's representative to the International Whaling Commission said. Science reports: "Japan has resumed its controversial lethal research whaling because it wants to determine how many minke whales can be harvested sustainably while studying the environment, Joji Morishita, the nation's representative to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), told a press conference today. 'We'd like to find out how the marine ecosystem of the Antarctic Ocean is actually shifting or changing and not just look at whales but [also at] krill and the oceanographic situation,' Morishita said.

Japan's whaling fleet last week departed for the southern seas for the first time since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered the nation to halt its research whaling in March 2014. The court ruled that Japan's JARPA II program, which sought to take some 850 minke whales, 50 fin whales, and 50 humpback whales, was not for the purposes of scientific research as stipulated in the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. The convention allows countries to kill whales for research."

Comments

Re:Endangered species

[Rei]

1) Whales are not a single species

2) Minke whales are not endangered. They are classified as LC (least concern) by the IUCN. The Antarctic stock alone is estimated at over 500k.

3) Whaling is legal in parts of the US ("traditional whaling" by Alaskan natives... but as if the whales end up any less dead, or as if people are actually going out in canoes, hunting with spears, and bringing them back ashore by manpower, rather than going out in motorboats, hunting with large guns and explosive harpoons, and hauling them ashore with backhoes)

#3 is the one that really gets me when the US sees fit to lecture Iceland (where I live, which like Alaska also has a long tradition of whaling** and consumes similar whale per-capita) about the evils of whaling. Clean up your own damned backyard before you start lecturing others. Not that we really need a lecture on morality in general from a country that tortures people, or specifically a lecture on food-production morality from a country that produces most of its meat in factory farms in squalid conditions. At least whales live their whole lives free in near idyllic conditions rather than crammed in cages where they can barely turn around.

It's also counterproductive. The anti-whaling people who run all of these protests, particularly the really high profile ones (economic sanctions, hacking, violence, etc), just encourage people to want to support whaling even more. Think about it: how would you feel if some other country came in and said, "look, pigs score as well or better than dogs on most intelligence tests, yet you stubbornly refuse to stop eating them or even raise them in humane conditions"? You might have a "we'll just agree to disagree" reaction. Now imagine that said country or people from said country decided to try to force you to stop eating pork by slapping sanctions on your whole country, launching hacking campaigns against your government and businesses, sinking ships in your harbors, etc. How would you feel? How would you react? Would it make you more or less likely to eat pork? Most people would be so ticked off they'd eat more of it. Now imagine that said country that was doing all of this actually consumed significant amounts of pork themselves in one region. How would you feel?

Full disclosure: I'm a vegetarian. I just don't like hypocrisy or counterproductive actions. Let me help you out: if you really want to stop people in nations where whale is consumed from eating it, there is one tactic that is actually quite effective: health. Whale meat contains dangerous levels of heavy metals and accumulative organic toxins (dangerous to everyone, but particularly to pregnant women). The more people are aware of this, the less they feel comfortable eating it. Hence, raising awareness of this fact should be your goal. Not morality lectures and a "big stick" approach that - every time - only causes a pro-whaling backlash. Also, target the tourists. Nearly half of the whale consumed here is consumed by tourists - a lot of whom would describe themselves as anti-whaling and would never dream of eating it at home. It's amazing but for some reason when people are on vacation they act as if the normal rules of their life don't apply, as if whatever they do on vacation "doesn't count", that either their actions are insignificant or that it's okay because they're just "being like locals". The irony being that locals don't actually consume whale that often (horse, on the other hand...)

Re:Destination

[dcw3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The prized tail meat, called onomi (?) or oniku (?) are two strips of muscle that run from the dorsal to the base of the fluke. The tail meat is regarded as marbled, and is eaten as sashimi or tataki. Even Masanori Hata (aka Mutsugor) a zoologist author and animal shelter operator has extolled the delicacy of the tail meat.[

Re: Destination

[KGIII]

See Unit 731 for an example of the Japanese doing just that very thing. Well, no, they were torturing/killing the Chinese for medical experiments. It turns out that vivisection is deadly. Yay! Science!