Parry Sound-Muskoka Green Party

 
 
With worldwide attention firmly focused on the FIFA world cup in South Africa, another major event that should have received more attention quietly came and went in Morocco. The meeting was the annual gathering of the International Whaling Commission, the governing body charged with monitoring world whale populations.
Incredibly, the main topic of discussion was a relentless push by some nations, led by Japan, to convince the IWC to open a hunting season on the world’s whale populations. Commercial whaling has been banned since 1982 and some whale populations are down to just several hundred individuals and critically endangered. Yet, this motion still managed to make it on the agenda and had a very good chance of passing.

The lobbying for support included large bribes to smaller countries that have a vote and are in desperate need of cash and have little connection to the whales that often just pass by their shores.

Fortunately, mainly because there are still some committed activists out there that refuse to be distracted, the motion failed, but it was close.

Unfortunately, some nations like Japan and Iceland still harvest a large number of whales ever year under a silly exemption to the whaling moratorium that allows for a certain number of animals to be taken for “scientific research”. In this day and age DNA samples can tell you almost everything that you need to know about each individual whale. These biopsies can be taken easily with little harm to the mammal making the professed need by these nations to kill whales for research an absolute farce.

Ironically, Japan had offered to reduce its “scientific” killing of whales if the IWC agreed to let it harvest whales commercially and it was a compromise that, many nations (and even apparently the organization Greenpeace) considered to have some merit. However, tellingly, at the last minute Japan refused to reduce any of their whale kill targets.

The weak rational given by some supporters of a call to lift the ban suggests that a few countries simply ignore the current moratorium and, if lifted in favour of a limited hunt, then countries that currently violate the existing law may be more willing to observe the new quotas. Critics of this support suggest that rule breakers shouldn’t be rewarded and if they broke the old law, how could they be trusted to honour a new one?

Almost every species of whale has populations that are in decline or sometimes severely endangered. Not only do whales have to contend with the “research” vessels hunting them down, but they are also regularly hit by ships or caught in one of the thousands of fishing nets that are floating lose around the world’s oceans.

Add to this the very low reproduction rate of most whale species and it becomes apparent that the loss of any whales at this point in time has a big impact.

The fact is that whales pose absolutely no threat to humans, they rarely compete for marketable fish and they cruise the world’s oceans leading a relatively peaceful existence despite being some of the biggest creatures on earth. There is also no real need for whale meat or any other whale products as there is nothing that a whale can provide that we need or cannot find from other sources.

They are also some of the most intelligent creatures on earth with tight social structures, incredibly complex and detailed language and deep family bonds.

So, with no rational human need for whales and a recognition of how intelligent the mammals are and how drastically whale numbers have declined, there is absolutely no possible reason to continue to harvest these magnificent creatures.

There will come a time when we look back at our slaughter of whales and wonder how we could ever have been so callous and short sighted.

Leave them alone.
 


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