Whaling - WHY?!
[This was not meant to be a rant, but it descended into one. Sorry. That does rather lesson its academic credibility, but there you go. It's also bloody long - meep, you know me *looks sheepish*.]
I've been reading up again on that ecological pirate of the high seas, the Nisshin Maru.
For those of you that don't know, that is the whale hunter (sorry, Institute of Cetacean Research vessel) currently deployed south of New Zealand. According to BBC News, this year Japan says it plans to cull 850 minke whales and 10 fin whales.
The main method used to kill whales today is the "grenade harpoon". Admittedly, this will kill a whale much quicker than the old "cold harpoon" method, which is simply a metal harpoon fired into the depths of the animal, until its life drains away into the cold, uncaring ocean. But it remains inhumane, just a bit quicker.
Many things rile about this, disgust me, make me want to lamp the nearest Japanese Fishing Minister. One thing is this obnoxious nationalistic belief that Japan seems to hold (NB I don't mean in general, I only mean in reference to whaling; this is not a crude denigration of Japan, I am dealing with but a single issue); I don't mean that it is ignoring the international community (an odious little word, community - one never knows entirely what it means). No, what riles me is that they using this one method of rebellion as a nationalistic rallying point, saying that it is of cultural and historical importance that they eat whale. Oh yes - of course, the whales are hunted for research purposes (mainly to see how many they can catch, and how far they can push the rest of the world). The fact that they then end up on restaurant tables is neither here nor there. How any scientist can work with such a mendacious, politically-motivated form of ecological vandalism is beyond me, intellectually. How any scientist that truly loves the creatures they research can stand by as they are slaughtered on spurious ground is beyond me, emotionally.
But let's get back to their claim to cultural and historical importance. Historical and cultural heritages are an amazing thing; it seems you get to pick and choose which bits you keep and through away. So, that is what I intend to do now.
If we maintained our 'cultural heritage' selectively, we could still have:
What about the use of biological warfare in North America (giving the inhabitants blankets infected with smallpox, which was done by the British in the Seven Years War)? Or the fact that we, the British, invented the concentration camp in the Second Boer War, interning men, women and children in a way that would certainly be a war crime or crime against humanity nowadays?
I don't see Japanese people going around practicing the ways of the samurai. I very much doubt that Japanese people would give up Western additions to their diet (a diet which, though low in saturated fat, in many ways was not nutritious enough, and is one of the reasons for the increase in average height of Japanese people; this was common in most cultures before the 20th century, but with different diets lacking different nutrients; in this case, the diet was low in calcium and protein, and too high in salt and carcinogens due to the pickling of food).
Japan has a huge economy, despite unfortunate events in the 90s. They are the most technologically developed nation on Earth. They have very few natural resources, and their achievements are doubly miraculous because of this. They have a history, a culture, a language each of which is unique and intriguing. They are a world-class power, and the world knows this. They could crow about these things, and say to the rest of the world "look at us, and our international power".
So why do they use whale hunting as an international bartering chip? Could they not just repossess California instead? (Let me explain: a large proportion of the USA's trade deficit and national debt is with Japanese companies, and that debt is at record levels - they could probably break the American economy if they so wished, but they'd never kill the goose that keeps laying golden eggs.)
Finally, a few thoughts about whales and hunting them for you to consider:
I've been reading up again on that ecological pirate of the high seas, the Nisshin Maru.
For those of you that don't know, that is the whale hunter (sorry, Institute of Cetacean Research vessel) currently deployed south of New Zealand. According to BBC News, this year Japan says it plans to cull 850 minke whales and 10 fin whales.
The main method used to kill whales today is the "grenade harpoon". Admittedly, this will kill a whale much quicker than the old "cold harpoon" method, which is simply a metal harpoon fired into the depths of the animal, until its life drains away into the cold, uncaring ocean. But it remains inhumane, just a bit quicker.
Many things rile about this, disgust me, make me want to lamp the nearest Japanese Fishing Minister. One thing is this obnoxious nationalistic belief that Japan seems to hold (NB I don't mean in general, I only mean in reference to whaling; this is not a crude denigration of Japan, I am dealing with but a single issue); I don't mean that it is ignoring the international community (an odious little word, community - one never knows entirely what it means). No, what riles me is that they using this one method of rebellion as a nationalistic rallying point, saying that it is of cultural and historical importance that they eat whale. Oh yes - of course, the whales are hunted for research purposes (mainly to see how many they can catch, and how far they can push the rest of the world). The fact that they then end up on restaurant tables is neither here nor there. How any scientist can work with such a mendacious, politically-motivated form of ecological vandalism is beyond me, intellectually. How any scientist that truly loves the creatures they research can stand by as they are slaughtered on spurious ground is beyond me, emotionally.
But let's get back to their claim to cultural and historical importance. Historical and cultural heritages are an amazing thing; it seems you get to pick and choose which bits you keep and through away. So, that is what I intend to do now.
If we maintained our 'cultural heritage' selectively, we could still have:
- slavery
- legal domination of linguistic and ethnic minorities (Wales, Scotland and the banning of local languages)
- cock fighting
- marriage at the age of twelve of girls to much older men
- culturally acceptable domestic violence
What about the use of biological warfare in North America (giving the inhabitants blankets infected with smallpox, which was done by the British in the Seven Years War)? Or the fact that we, the British, invented the concentration camp in the Second Boer War, interning men, women and children in a way that would certainly be a war crime or crime against humanity nowadays?
I don't see Japanese people going around practicing the ways of the samurai. I very much doubt that Japanese people would give up Western additions to their diet (a diet which, though low in saturated fat, in many ways was not nutritious enough, and is one of the reasons for the increase in average height of Japanese people; this was common in most cultures before the 20th century, but with different diets lacking different nutrients; in this case, the diet was low in calcium and protein, and too high in salt and carcinogens due to the pickling of food).
Japan has a huge economy, despite unfortunate events in the 90s. They are the most technologically developed nation on Earth. They have very few natural resources, and their achievements are doubly miraculous because of this. They have a history, a culture, a language each of which is unique and intriguing. They are a world-class power, and the world knows this. They could crow about these things, and say to the rest of the world "look at us, and our international power".
So why do they use whale hunting as an international bartering chip? Could they not just repossess California instead? (Let me explain: a large proportion of the USA's trade deficit and national debt is with Japanese companies, and that debt is at record levels - they could probably break the American economy if they so wished, but they'd never kill the goose that keeps laying golden eggs.)
Finally, a few thoughts about whales and hunting them for you to consider:
- it is very hard to kill an animal that size humanely; if they were any other mammal, it would likely be illegal to kill them using harpoon methods.
- in an abattoir in the UK, animals are rendered unconscious/comatose using a captive bolt gun (this works like a massive blow to the head; the effect is probably so instantaneous the animals feel no pain); the animal's brain stem is then destroyed (making certain that life is extinct); how does one do anything comparable to this to an animal whose tongue alone may be the size of a Mini?
- whales are wild animals, whose numbers have plummeted in the past two centuries. They are not farm animals who numbers can be replenished at will; treating them like a common-place commodity will render them extinct.
- being large mammals, it takes a long time for their calves to mature; in other words, they breed slowly, so any impact on populations will be felt for decades at the very least.
- population bottleneck = reduced gene pool. Look at the effect that is having on the tasmanian devil's ability to fight disease.
- with Victorian methods, their numbers were decimated, with many species near extinction. Imagine the impact of a fleet of modern vessels (in the nightmare scenario that the moratorium on whale hunting was reversed completely); indeed, look at the effect of modern trawler fleets on the ocean ecologies.
- as animals go, whales are intelligent creatures. The more people research whale song, the more they find complexity in the signal. No one is saying that they are as intelligent as people, but if they were chimpanzees or gorillas I think that people would find it harder to kill them.
- elephant ivory, rare animal skins, rhino horn, tiger claws, wild bear bile. We live on land, and we can see the effect the illegal trade in these materials has on animal populations. But who comprehends the depths of the ocean? To many, a whale is nothing but a bloody big fish to be harvested.
- as witnessed on the (stunning tour de force that is) The Blue Planet, the ecology of the sea floor and the abyssal plains is not well understood; whale carcasses and bones were seen to be hives of activity - who knows exactly what role they play in transferring nutrients from the rich waters to poorer waters?
- finally, a thought based on the previous bullet point: the understanding of ecosystems is difficult; we do not know if reducing whale numbers harms other aspects of the ecosystem, is just a symptom of our ecologically obtuse ways.