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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."
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."
Would any of these whales killed for "scientific" purposes happen to end up on the dinner plates of Japanese restaurant-goers?
I thought we were done with this shit. No one in the world believes Japan actually cares about the research and their "research program" has been debunked by the ICJ the one time it did come under scrutiny.
Heck even Terry Prachett made a joke about it in the discworld series:
"The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week?"
One wonders if one would get the go ahead to perform the same experiment substituting "Japanese Whale Scientist" for "Mink Whale"... how many would we need to cull in order to put an end to such ridiculous idea and an end to hunting and killing these amazing animals?
And, unlike them, the fruits of our hunting won't make it onto any dinner plates...
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...)
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
Fail. There is no 'v' in Japanese. Had you written 'belly' or 'welly' it would have been semi-accurate. Regardless, fuck you.
** The whole concept that it's okay for Alaskans to whale because it's "traditional" but it's not okay for Icelanders just stinks of racism - that because the Inuit and Yupik are american indian peoples then their culture and history matters, but Icelanders are just white devils, so who gives a rat's arse that Icelanders have been eating whale for over a thousand years on the island, and their ancestors in Scandinavia for thousands of years before that? Who cares that it was such an important part of Icelandic life that it's even part of the language, such as hvalreki - literally "beached whale", but also used as "godsend", because finding a beached whale used to be the difference between life and death for entire towns? Meh, Icelanders are just evil white people so their cultures don't count. Icelanders, Norwegians, Russians, Faroese, Japanese... all get put into the "modern peoples" category, but Alaskans are just "natives preserving their culture" - you know, those primitives who live in modern houses, ride around on snowmobiles and fly from town to town by bushplane. It's okay if they do it, their culture and history actually matters!
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
If they don't want to eat whales or use their skins - that's fine - but they don't have the right to ram down their viewpoints down everyone else's throats, particularly other countries. It reminds me of abortion - if you don't like it, then don't have one but leave other people alone.
Precisely. And the same should be applied to laws against animal torture. If you don't like to slowly rip the flesh out from living kittens, then smashing their toes with hammers, and finally setting their bloodied bodies in fire, then just don't do it. As for those who enjoy hearing the screams of tortured dying kittens, let them. /sarcasm
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
"This has nothing to do with one wrong / many worngs"
..."
This has everything to do with it and how you put forward your argument defending Japan in this "scientific research" hypocrisy scheme. I am not condoning any country breaking international law, and in the case of Japan, every indication is that they are getting away with it as well, so no "DOUBLE STANDARD" here.
"Just because the Japs ain't 'whites'
No one is mentioning skin color except you so that should tell you something.
A large part of the reason Minke whales have such a large population are because they've had to fill the void left by the decimation of other species of whale - whale help to fertilise the oceans by spreading nutrients around, which in turn help grow fish stocks by making sure ample food is present.
Should the population of large whales increase, the population of Minke whales will decrease to a point of equilibrium determined by survival of the fittest. The problem is that populations of whales typically take decades to return to their natural levels of balance, thus it'll take a long time before blue whales and so forth can reach a population size at which they would naturally be expected to achieve.
So species such as Minke whales are able to fill the void the missing blue whales otherwise would, thus it's irrelevant that there are lots of them - you need a certain level of whale biomass to prevent problematic algae build up, and to help keep fish stocks healthy amongst other things. Hence, just because Minke whales are well populated doesn't make it okay to hunt them, it just means that as yet unrecovered populations of other previously over-hunted whale species will be coupled with reduced Minke populations and in turn will mean we end up with a level of whale biomass too small to perform it's task in the ecosystem to a suitable degree. This in turns leads to environmental problems and reduction of fish stocks.
The IUCN simply ranks species based on how at threat they are from extinction - this isn't simply a question of population, for example, some plant species have healthy population numbers in the hundreds of thousands, but only grow on rocky outcrops that are tagged for potential mining - in that case the population numbers are good, but the threat of extinction is still high. What the IUCN does not do is take into account the impact of hunting a species, thus it's not true that a least concern ranking on the IUCN list correlates with "Okay to hunt". It's possible for something to be near extinct, but fine to hunt to extinction because it has little relevance to it's ecosystem, just as it's for something to be least concern, but still a bad idea to hunt as in this case. Suggesting that because something is ranked as least concern that it must be okay to hunt is a completely invalid way to interpret IUCN rankings because that's not what they measure - it's a measure of population health and NOT a measure of population value within the ecosystem.
There has been a particular focus on whales over the years for precisely the fact that they have a high ecosystem value, more recently the same is beginning to be realised for sharks also having long been characterised as evil pointless predators. Contrary to what the Japanese, Icelanders and so forth will tell you, the IWC itself, and the ICJs rulings are as they are not because of emotion, but because they're important to help make sure we can maintain healthy oceans. This something we're already struggling to do as is with over-fishing in general, much more so if we end up with even greater reduced fish stocks due to ecosystem problems due to whale over-hunting.
So species such as Minke whales are able to fill the void the missing blue whales otherwise would, thus it's irrelevant that there are lots of them - you need a certain level of whale biomass to prevent problematic algae build up, and to help keep fish stocks healthy amongst other things. Hence, just because Minke whales are well populated doesn't make it okay to hunt them, it just means that as yet unrecovered populations of other previously over-hunted whale species will be coupled with reduced Minke populations and in turn will mean we end up with a level of whale biomass too small to perform it's task in the ecosystem to a suitable degree. This in turns leads to environmental problems and reduction of fish stocks.
I don't think it's completely irrelevant. If there is a huge number of minke whales then they are competing with the "actually endangered" species and thinning them out a little might actually help the other endangered whale species.
That being said, I think Japan's premise is laughable and an insult to the rest of the world. I would much rather them say "we believe that reducing the minke whale population will help other whale populations recover" or even "we believe there are plenty of minke whales and are going to harvest some just because". 333 whales out of 500k is not going to hurt the minke whale population but they shouldn't claim it is scientific research.