Whaling: Why the practice will not go away

Whaling: Why the practice will not go away

I read the article to see why it won't go away, but that wasn't answered?

kiwiboy.

answer may be published in next article...

The bigger question is why the Japanese govt is so intent on scaling up its whaling operations while demand for the meat in Japan has dwindled to such a low level.

Whaling: Why the practice will not go away

And what's the answer? Is there a "part 2" coming out sometime soon?

How come is whaling industry survive? They survive using tax payer money.

That article above just doesn't mention main factor how that industry can survive all this time.

https://wwf.panda.org/es/?167621/Norway-Japan-prop-up-whaling-industry-with-taxpayer-money

https://www.dw.com/en/is-japans-whaling-industry-going-under-as-demand-sinks/a-62626007

It won’t go away because humans are mammals and mammals eat other mammals.

Will the practice of frogs catching insects ever go away?

No, it’s nature.

Their country, their rules..

GO JAPAN !!..

Their country, international waters.

GO HOME

Since there was no answer to 'Why?' in this article my assumption is it boils down to pigheaded stupidity.

Whaling: Why the practice will not go away

As long as J-Gov continues to subsidize the industry as it can't keep afloat on sales of meat alone, maybe not. And if J-Gov doesn't care that consumption continues to decline and fewer and fewer Japanese are willing to support the industry, maybe not.

But lets just be intellectually honest, this isn't about Japanese culture, or an issue of "food security", this is about bureaucrats getting kickbacks and landing cozy after-retirement jobs with large companies. This is about an industry hunting whales thousands of kilometers from home with large factory ships at tremendous expense, NOT traditional, coastal, father-and-son fishing operations just barely making it financially from one season to another hoping to keep food on the table. So maybe the premise of the title is incorrect and should be,

Whaling: Will the practice go away?

And I think we all kinda know the answer to that, don't we!

@deanzaZZR

Their country, international waters.

GO HOME

However our tax money, we have right to speak out our voice.

There's a little whale meat shop on Kanpachi dori, Ota Ku. They have vending machines that serve tasty whale meat snack to the old folk.

Ahhhh, natsukashiiiii.......

Wow! Such unbias article from AFP. LOL

Considering his age, Mr Watson should be extradited to Japan in autumn so that he could avoid languishing in prison in the sweltering hot summer of the country. He may not have time to enjoy viewing the autumn foliage though.

The bigger question is why the Japanese govt is so intent on scaling up its whaling operations while demand for the meat in Japan has dwindled to such a low level.

scale up and bring the cost down.

JeffLee:

The bigger question is why the Japanese govt is so intent on scaling up its whaling operations while demand for the meat in Japan has dwindled to such a low level.

Pride and the fear of loss of face. Maybe Gambare might have a different answer.

Tokyo argues that eating whale is part of Japanese culture and an issue of "food security" in the resource-poor country, which imports large amounts of animal meat.

This is not an answer to the whaling issue. Japanese people do not rely on whale meat to sustain themselves. In fact, very few people eat it regularly. The majority of the population do not eat it all. It is served as a special menu in specialised restaurants at ridiculous prices. This has nothing to do with 'food security'. It is only about profiting from the slaughter of whales. The answer to the question is, Japan has billions of dollars invested in their whaling industry and they will not let it go. It's not culture or food security. It's money!

The bigger question is why the Japanese govt is so intent on scaling up its whaling operations while demand for the meat in Japan has dwindled to such a low level.

You can thank Mr Watson for this. Commercial whaling would have quietly died in the early 2000's. The market for whale meat had been steadily shrinking over the years and there was no interest to save the "tradition". But then Watson came along with his television stunts (whale wars reality TV) which caused the Japanese government to dig in its nationalist heels while the Japanese support for whaling was reawakened and grew stronger than ever. Watson, with his high profile anti-whaling activism managed to reinvigorate the support for whaling in Japan and thus contributed more to the continuous slaughter of whales than anybody else before him.

TokyoLivingToday  07:42 am JST

Their country, their rules.. 

GO JAPAN !!..

Up to a certain point. I wonder if you would say the same to the pumping of more CO2, in relation to climate change. While we cut CO2, its ok for say XXXX country to pump even more CO2.

How about the overfishing of Tuna stocks? It maybe their country and their rules, but rules can change, people change,the diet, the economy,society, conventions, technology, and science changes, but the sea, and planet belongs to us all. I think the I'm alright jack perspective is..................!!!!!

This is yet another government scam foisted upon the people. Initiated by the Americans post-war to help feed a starving population, perpetuated by bureaucracy to support amakudari moves into lucrative jobs for retired politicians. Many years of whale meat lies in cold storage, markets for which do not exist.

The Japanese whaling industry employs less than 1,000 workers surviving only because of billions in subsidies including the construction of the new whaling ship. Let it survive without taxpayers' money.

i have been in Japan for so many years but never a once i try the whale meat. People dont like to eat it or buy it, i wonder why they still continue the activity

I like to know why whales beach themselves. Seem like they have a intent on killing themselves. Does it happen in the northern Hemisphere ? I wonder how they are going spin this when they clam it is cause by climate change. Then Million of $ will be funded to link it to climate change.

The minke is not endangered. Therefore Japan and anyone else has the right to hunt and eat them. Regardless of whether others think they are cute, love their young or any other reason.

Just because one species is endangered doesn't mean a total ban on all others.

I have no problem eating whale in Japan as long as it Minke or one of the plentiful dolphins often sold as "whale".

wallaceToday 11:09 am JST

The Japanese whaling industry employs less than 1,000 workers surviving only because of billions in subsidies including the construction of the new whaling ship. Let it survive without taxpayers' money.

It can't survive on its own! The reason why the Fisheries Agency is so hell bent on keeping it afloat has nothing to do with tradition but amakudari, the golden parachute for those high level bureaucrats after retirement as well as the kickbacks from the whaling fleet operators.

Whaling is part of Japan's history and culture.

Are they going to stop because they were told to by other countries?

It is natural for a country to protect a particular industry that is in decline, and as a result, they will be able to reduce beef imports from the United States and Australia.

That is why exporting countries criticize whaling. Because beef will no longer sell.

However, everyone knows that raising even one cow puts a considerable burden on the environment.

It was common to have whale meat served in elementary schools 30 to 40 years ago.

There is nothing wrong with using whale meat as a food alternative to beef or pork.

It is not the case that Japanese people are driving whales to extinction.

It is not something that the United States or Australia can criticize, as they reduced the population by hunting too much whales.

Australia in particular is not a country that can be called a model student in wildlife conservation, even as a compliment. One-third of the world's mammal extinctions since the 17th century have occurred in Australia.

There is now only one whaling fleet operator. There were six before.

Yes: Those wanting whaling to cease are the ones whom decimated the whale population for oil where the Japanese hunted the whale during the same period for protein to substance their families.

A 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling allowed numbers to recover following centuries of hunting that decimated the population to near-extinction.

Recovered slightly. Numbers are nowhere close to what they were before commercial whaling began. It would take many more decades of no hunting for these creatures to recover completely.

The article didn't provide the answer, however it is quite simple. It is because of demand. And the demand is not domestically but mostly International. Countries like China, Korea, USA or even the ones in Europe have high demand of whale meat, which is sold as delicacy for VERY high amount of money. The irony is, most of those countries have banned whale's hunting, nut not the food. Where do you think they will get the food from then? ;)

It’s completely illogical and exceedingly expensive to hunt animals so far away from Japan.

If the government were concerned about ‘food security’ then the upkeep of goats, deers and rabbits would have been encouraged across Japan on the millions of smallholdings out there.

The truth is that the Japanese government would prefer to control the population with regards to food,energy and education et al.

Japanese whale meat exports?

Japan imports whale meat from Iceland but does not export it. Iceland has resumed Fin Whale hunting for the Japanese market—just the belly and the tail.

Agent_NeoToday 12:54 pm JST

There is nothing wrong with using whale meat as a food alternative to beef or pork.

Heard of Minamata disease?

Mercury levels can be 20 to 5,000 times higher in dolphin and small whale meat than levels recommended by the UN World Health Organization and the Japanese Ministry of Health.

Studies of populations that consume cetacean meat and blubber have shown that mercury and other contaminants adversely affect fetal development, including infant immune function, neural development and memory, as well as increasing the risk of developing Parkinson’s, hypertension and arteriosclerosis in adults.

Tuna is not even recommended for children and especially pregnant women as it also exceeds safety levels for reasons above.

Whaling: Why the practice will not go away

The article is long winded and covers a bunch of other stuff not related to the title.

I read the article to see why it won't go away, but that wasn't answered?

Did you read the following?

Tokyo argues that eating whale is part of Japanese culture and an issue of "food security" in the resource-poor country, which imports large amounts of animal meat.

Basically this is the sentence that answers why it won't go away.

Whaling is supported by the right-wing groups which some of the government members also belong to and Whaling is buying their votes.

The answer to the article's question is simple: whaling won't go away because it doesn't need to. It's simple as that.

The main reason many whales species were on the brink of extinction was because many Western countries were hunting them for their oil. Measures like the Blue Whale Unit (which set equivalences between the baleen whale species based on the amount of oil that could be taken from them) were created in the 1930s by those Western nations in order to stabilise the price of whale oil, and then reused by the IWC from 1948. Because of those measures, the whalers would focus on the bigger species (blue whales, fin whales, humpback whales and so on...), almost depleting their populations.

Nowadays, whales are solely hunted for meat consumption at much lower levels, based on estimates of each population and with very conservative algorythm designed to lower any risk such as the Revised Management Procedure created by the IWC in 1991.

Note that the moratorium voted by the IWC in 1982 didn't do anything to help the whale species to recover as all those that were threatened had already been protected in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact the IWC's own scientific committee didn't judge the moratorium to be necessary. In any case, it wasn't made to be kept for nearly 40 years as the main objective was to allow for the IWC to review the populations ("stocks" in the IWC jargon). Japan had objected to the moratorium (just like Norway), but was then forced by the USA to withdraw its objection. It's only option was then to conduct research under the special permits as defined in article VIII of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, the founding text of the IWC. Said article let's the member nation that emitted the permits to decide how to use the meat from the whales caught for research, and in the case of Japan, the meat was sold to help fund its programs.

Japan has left the IWC in 2019, and is now hunting whales in its EEZ.

Despite Paul Watson's claims, Japanese whaling is perfectly legal, and I honestly doubt he and his crew would have been able to interfere with the newly made Kangei Maru. The Japanese coastguards would have arrested them way before they could have approached it. In fact, Watson certainly knew of that and didn't have any plan of going anywhere near Japan. This is proven by the fact his ship, the John Paul DeJoria, and its crew have stayed in Halifax, Canada, for more than 2 weeks now, doing nothing to protect the whales.

One thing journalists (and the Captain Paul Watson Fundation) forget to say is that Greenland is a whaling country as well. Its people catch fin whales (just like Japan started to do this year), humpback whales and bowhead whales using the same technology as the Japanese, Norwegian and Icelandic whalers: harpoon guns with penthrite. Watson certainly knew he wasn't welcome in Greenland and he could be arrested. That was giving him the perfect excuse not to go to Japan and now he can make a campaign all about the cult leader he is and raise donations without doing anything about the whales.

The Guardian newspaper has an interesting story today by the ex head of the IWC Peter Bridgewater....

Whales are doing well so it’s time to scrap the body that once protected them, says former head

The International Whaling Commission has become a ‘zombie’ and should vote to disband itself, insists Peter Bridgewater

One-sided article, with no one representing the voice of people with opinions like mine.

To the extent it’s sustainable, then it’s great. Better than farming cows.

And on consumption levels being low - duh. It’s a daft argument.

It’s like saying “not people people wear diamonds, therefore the demand for diamonds is low”.

The answer is that the large reduction in whaling levels reduced the availability of the product versus the 1960’s when whaling was close to peak unsustainability.

Duh, duh, duh.

@johnsan. Yes, whales do occasionally beach themselves in the UK, but it's relatively rare. In July 2024, a pod of 77 pilot whales washed ashore on a beach in Orkney, which could have been the largest mass stranding in Scotland since 1995. In 2023, about 55 pilot whales also stranded on the island of Lewis, off Scotland's northwest coast.

If the title of this article is "Whaling: Why the practice will not go away" the rest of the article is off-topic!

Tokyo argues that eating whale is part of Japanese culture

It seems to be becoming more a part of Japanese history given the significant decline in consumption in the last few decades.

クジラの殺害について容認できる見解を与えようとする侮辱的な記事。許せない。日本人は恥じると同時に激怒すべきだ。

我不太喜欢吃鲸鱼肉。它肉的味道象变质牛肉一样。

Rubbish article - one sided. I grew up eating whale meat about 2 to 3 time a month. Almost always minke whale. Now its hard to find whale meat, but it is tasty if you know how to cook it. It is a bit oily so we would keep in milk over night before cooking it. But it could become popular once more, specially in restaurants. There is no scientific reason not to hunt minke whale, there is plenty of them in the oceans. The people against whaling are so because it is emotional to them.

If Japan is so self righteous about killing whales and dolphins for food consumption then why don’t they feed their school kids these endangered meats. Oh, it’s because of the high mercury content in these meats. Then the only justification is kill for the thrill of it.

High mercury is present in certain type of tuna, dolphins and whales like pilot whales but some in some whales its not a problem. On average, bowhead whales have the lowest mean mercury concentrations—0.02 ppm. This is an order of magnitude lower than U.S. human health thresholds. In comparison when you buy farmed meat they are full of antibiotics and pesticides.

Tokyo argues that eating whale is part of Japanese culture...

With the population declining and once all the older folk who think this way pass on, I'm sure the practice will gradually fade out. I don't know anyone under forty who actually likes whale meat and goes out of their way to eat it.

I don't know anyone under forty who actually likes whale meat and goes out of their way to eat it.

That seals it then doesn’t it…

Minamata disease? Of course I know about it. It's one of the four major pollution diseases that occurred in the Agano River.

Japanese people love tuna, but so far no one has been poisoned by mercury.

The same goes for whale meat. Japan's food safety standards exceed those of Europe and the United States.

That's why you can eat raw eggs in Japan.

It's unthinkable in other countries, right?

Whale meat has only become unavailable due to various regulations, so people have stopped eating it, but it has actually been eaten as a seafood delicacy since before the Edo period.

Eating whale meat is definitely healthier than promoting the Western way of eating meat, isn't it?

There's nothing wrong with promoting sustainable whaling.