Is the so called ‘climb-down’ by the Japanese, regarding the hunting of fifty Humped-back whales, a genuine turn-around, or were they merely being clever by threatening to hunt them, knowing that when the protests came in, and they appeared to climb-down, they would then be free to hunt the other one thousand whales of a different species that the world appears to be less concerned about?
Personally, I think they ‘boxed-clever’.
Mankind should forbid whaling completely, not even for “scientific purposes”.
Yes we should forbid to slaughter the whales for a Japane dinner.
Lets eat better soya beans and dogs like a Chinas/Koreans:)
What’s so special about whales, apart from the fact that they’ve been adopted by the tree huggers as the special marine mammal, since clubbing fur seals dropped off their radar?
Why not get wound up about the billions of cows and sheep killed to satisfy Western diets?
Why are whales so special, but prawns and lobsters and crayfish and vast species of fish aren’t?
Oh, they’re not mammals?
Gee, we ought to give special protection to mammals.
Such as, say, Palestinians or West Irians.
Saving whales is an exercise for the same sort of people who kill humans to save lab rats, because they’re paragons of moral action.
The sort of people who’ve lost sight of common sense, and who have the luxury of funding ships to go into the Southern Ocean with modern pirates when a half way reasonable person would be funding vessels to confront the Israelis or Indonesians to save other humans. Who, apparently, in their thousands don’t equal even one whale. Or lab rat.
The difference is that the Japanese whalers don’t shoot back, so they’re an easy target. Especially when arseholes like Sea Shepherd ram them.
No, I don’t like Japan thumbing its nose at the international community, but equally I don’t like the international community bleating about bloody whales when it does bugger all about Palestinians and many other human beings who suffer worse assaults by humankind.
Dogs http://www.slate.com/id/2060840/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loupiote/sets/1652923/
Not to mention monkey brains. http://maxent.org/ch/monkey_brains_ad.html
That, of course, is what you’d expect of the primitive Asians. Not like the cultured Europeans, as exemplified by the utterly cultured French, who are down to a mere 1,000 specialist horse butchers.
The French have a reputation for being willing to eat almost anything that moves and of not being too concerned about cruelty to animals.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article68905.ece
So where’s the international outrage about the Frogs eating horse, not to mention the Asians having a bit of monkey and dog?
Naturally, we’re pure down here. It’s only the major supermarkets that stock kangaroo meat.
If we’re going to decry killing animals, it’d make a lot more sense to be consistent in doing it, rather than having arbitrary fondness for certain species.
There IS a fair amount of outrage about Horse eating frogs and Asians eating everything that was alive. Particulary the dogs, seeing as they are routinely beaten to “improve” the flavour.
The big thing here, is that whales are in danger of being eaten to extinction.
I’ve never seen the “science” in shooting a whale with a harpoon.
There’s no science in it.
It’s pure bullshit, justifying what whaling nations want to do.
No different to oil guzzling nations justifying what they do over Kyoto etc.
Why didn’t Sea Shepherd get stuck into trying to sink the Norwegian whalers? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4551258.stm
And why isn’t Sea Shepherd getting stuck into every abbatoir in the world, where the vast bulk of mammals are getting slaughtered?
The cows and sheep aren’t at risk of going extinct as they are bred to be eaten. I don’t have per se a problem with anyone eating anything, not dogs, horses, frogs, fish, insects. I consider us omnivore by nature since 1000000 bc. But the big whales reproduce so slowly and we had reduced the population base so much that we just have to wait for some decades or even centuries before we can consider to allow some kill quotas again.
VEry resonable mst Drake.
Hey Rising Sun stop defend the Japs:)This is my exclusive matter in Hirosima thread:)
Look at the poor big whales who are has been slughtered by those wild asians.They are even do not plan to care about reproducing of the whales.
To be fair, this is no recent adoption. I think the greater concern was the fact that several species of whales have been driven to extinction. Other’s to the brink of it…
This of course ignores an essential fact that we are deeply in trouble with the oceans due to overfishing and pollution…
Jup, I expect the world population in 2100 to be closer to the one of 1000 ad than the one of 2000 ad. Once we push formerly balanced systems to a certain point they’ll topple. We’ve seen it many times on small scale but somehow manage to refuse this as a possibility for large ecosystems.
That’s the first time I’ve been accused of defending the Japs.
Look at the poor big whales who are has been slughtered by those wild asians.They are even do not plan to care about reproducing of the whales.
I’m not in favour of hunting whales, and least of all by the Japanese with their absurd claims to scientific research.
My point is simply that a select few animals get attention as being worthy of preservation, while many others with an equal claim on our concern don’t.
It’s about emotional responses to certain animals because of their perceived majesty or intelligence or attractiveness to humans, such as whales and dolphins and baby seals. Just about everybody outside Japan and Norway love whales and dolphins apart from being on a plate, and almost everybody loves baby seals.
Nobody likes sharks, so the shark fin industry doesn’t generate the same level of public outrage, although some groups are trying to change that. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/archive/2003/01/20/urbananimal.DTL
If the people who are opposed to whaling were consistent, they’d be just as vocal about, say, shark finning. And Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace would be doing their publicity stunts on sharks instead of whales.
That’s the first time I’ve been accused of defending the Japs.
Look at the poor big whales who are has been slughtered by those wild asians.They are even do not plan to care about reproducing of the whales.
I’m not in favour of hunting whales, and least of all by the Japanese with their absurd claims to scientific research.
My point is simply that a select few animals get attention as being worthy of protection or preservation, while many others with an equal or stronger claim on our concern don’t.
It’s about emotional responses to certain animals because of their perceived majesty or intelligence or attractiveness to humans, such as whales and dolphins and baby seals. Just about everybody outside Japan and Norway love whales and dolphins apart from being on a plate, and almost everybody loves baby seals.
Nobody likes sharks, so the shark fin industry doesn’t generate the same level of public outrage, although some groups are trying to change that. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/archive/2003/01/20/urbananimal.DTL
If the people who are opposed to whaling on animal rights or species preservations grounds were consistent, they’d be just as vocal about, say, shark finning. And Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace would be doing their publicity stunts on sharks instead of whales. Then instead of television broadcasting endless images of majestic whales being harpooned and dragged into factory ships on the news, we’d see films like these
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW-B891Xa-U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zep7B1esW-M
Compared with the sharks, the whales have got it easy.
I actually love sharks. And I indeed consider this even a bigger problem than the whales, as the big predators play a crucial role for every ecosystem.
I don’t love them.
I’m frightened of them, because they are bloody frightening. http://www.apexpredators.com/store/showCategoriesProducts.asp?categoryID=6
I swim and body surf a lot a few miles from a major seal colony where the great whites go for food, and I’m always conscious of the risk that they might be around, not that they’re seen much. Here’s one that got into the bay behind the island rather than the ocean beach where I was swimming at the beginning of this year when the article was written. http://hairybeast.wordpress.com/2007/01/19/20-foot-great-white-shark-menaces-aussie-beach/
Not that I’ve ever seen one, 'cos usually you don’t until they have you, but the water goes brown around me when I see the dolphin fins going past out past the breakers. Takes a few seconds to work out the difference in dorsal fin shape.
Exactly.
What happens if a top line predator gets taken out of the food chain?
The marine equivalent of a rabbit plague?
Pursuing my point about unattractive things being ignored, who gives a stuff about orange roughy, which were fished close to extinction in less than a decade, despite taking decades to grow to maturity and living up to one and a half centuries.
Without anyone having the faintest idea what the consequences might be of taking them out of the deep sea food chain?
http://www.amcs.org.au/default2.asp?active_page_id=157
And, yes, I ate a good quantity of them, and they taste very nice, without the faintest idea that I was eating fish that could have been born before my great grandfather, and that they couldn’t replenish themselves at the rate they were being fished. 
Huh, I wouldn’t swim there, I’d be to afraid to enjoy the swim
I like all the big predators (from bears to sharks), but I’d always keep my safe distance.
And yes, you wouldn’t see the big white one, they usually attack from deep down shooting up to the surface when they’re hunting seals afaik.
Jup, uncontrolled growth with a following total population collapse and usually proliferation of diseases.
I had written a small computer programme as a project for the biology class in ninth grade or so which “simulated” a closed habitat with basic food, a food consumer and a predator. Though it was very rudimentary it gives you an idea what can happen if you meddle with the variables and in most cases it didn’t end nice and stable but rather chaotic.
A large proportion of beach based (i.e. not skin divers etc) shark attacks actually occur in quite shallow water on slowly shelving beaches, often reported as being only knee deep. For example http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=shark+attack+knee+deep&btnG=Google+Search&meta=cr%3DcountryAU
You can imagine how uncomfortable I feel when I’m bobbing around in 1.5 (and suddenly 2 to 3 metre when a wave comes in) to 3 metre water with no idea what’s underneath me. Seaweed brushing my legs can cause hysteria which requires hospitalisation. A seal, or even a surfer in a black wetsuit, surfacing within my view can cause a cardiac arrest.
All this added to the fun of trying to keep out of rips that want to sweep me out to sea, where the big beasts lurk.
But the shallow water ones should be tiger sharks or something, not that it would matter if they bite you
My cousin lives in australia and my other cousin visited last year for work and travel and I always made jokes how one could live/travel in/to a place where you either get eaten or poisoned as soon as you get out of your bed
Mate, you’re far more likely to be poisoned here by some clumsy cook in, say, a Turkish or Chinese restaurant than you are by any native animal.
Lack of familiarity with the wonders of refrigeration and not knowing, or caring, about salmonella and inadequately cooked chicken etc causes a lot more harm here than the occasional shark, snake, blue ringed octopus, crocodile, funnel web spider, and so on. Admittedly, you’ll die in a few minutes from a full bite from some of these creatures on the very rare occasions anyone is bitten, where you’ll just spend a few days wishing you were dead from the bad cooks on the almost daily occasions they poison people.