E-Paper
Whale of a problem
It?s high time the Japanese stopped pretending their whale hunting is for ?scientific research? and acknowledged that whales and dolphins are not just ?big fish?.
It’s deplorable that some countries, led by Japan, should hijack the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting that ended in St Kitts last Monday. Pro-whaling nations reportedly won a wafer-thin vote at the meet to scrape past loud protests from India, the US, Brazil, Australia and most of Europe. Japan apparently used its immense clout of being a top donor of aid money in the world to buy the deciding votes, which could possibly end the 20-year moratorium on commercial whaling.
The IWC, originally set up after WW II to regulate global whale-hunting, subsequently became involved in stopping hunting altogether, much to the chagrin of predator nations like Japan and Norway. In hindsight, this couldn’t have happened sooner since many of the 80-odd species of cetaceans — whales, dolphins, and porpoises — were on the brink of extinction in the mid-20th century. Thanks to this lifejacket, whale numbers have now recovered somewhat. Of course, their numbers are still far below what existed before industrial whaling turned oceans into killing fields for these remarkable mammals.
There is clearly no justification — social, cultural, ecological, or nutritional — for resuming the mindless slaughter, and even the original reason — to procure whale oil for edible products and industrial lubricants — no longer holds true, as petroleum products are far cheaper to produce. The Japanese argument that ‘whales are threatening fish stocks’ is absurd. If anything, overfishing by humans has a far greater impact. True, some whales relish fish — just as others dig plankton — but this has been essential to maintain the ecosystem of the oceans for millions of years, and many marine species depend on whales for their existence.
So it’s high time the Japanese stopped pretending their whale hunting is for ‘scientific research’ and acknowledged that whales and dolphins are not just ‘big fish’. These are highly advanced life forms that sing lullabies to their young and engage in complex family systems, and whose communication and navigation skills we can only marvel at.
