How else are they going to research how the whales taste?
Ah, so in 2082 perhaps a paper will be released on 100 Years of Annual Whale Tastings: Subtle Variations on a Theme, 1982-2082 :p.
I’d say that the majority of reasearch into fish quantity is done by the fishery. How long does it take to fill quotas. How many boats are fishing, average catch, success rates. All that information factors into the health of the fishery.
Yes, it’s an interesting situation from that perspective. Little history of whaling (mostly small coastal towns hunting smaller dolphins/porpoises close to the coast), and the meat is not popular. Up until 2012 about three-quarters of the meat ended up in an ever-growing storage mountain.
So the government has to greatly subsidize the industry, and then try to promote the consumption of the meat. (They even stage events where officials eat whale meat publicity as ostensibly promoting the ‘scientific whaling programme’ 
).
Well, the whale.
Personally I would agree that if the whale is not endangered and is killed relatively humanely I would have no problem with it. I’m reading conflicting things on whether the latter is the case, but certainly it seems to be a lot slower in the majority of cases than a bolt gun with cattle.
I’ve never really understood the international outcry about the Japanese hunting and eating non-endangered whales. I’ve got no problem with it, personally. The Japanese don’t go around telling us not to eat ducks or rabbits, so who genuinely cares if the Japanese want to kill a small and sustainable number of whales of a species which isn’t anywhere near being endangered?
Indeed, if we had had fish the past 7 days and I was tired of it, I would not say “let’s have meat tonight”, because the last 7 days meals did have meat. I’d say something like “let’s have red meat tonight”. I wouldn’t have a good word to mean “meat other than from a fish”. Perhaps we need to make up a new word? I propose “landflesh”. 
The Sea Shepherds do a pretty good job of disrupting the hunt most years using non-violent direct action. If you really want to stop it, donate money to the Sea Shepherds. They also have other good campaigns aimed at shutting down poachers in sensitive areas, not just Japanese whaling.
Oh and the “research” excuse is laughable. The Japanese whaling ships are factory slaughter ships, they do zero research and somehow all the meat ends up on sale. Most Japanese people don’t even like whale, its foul and tasteless. The only reason they refuse to stop is some kind of national pride that they won’t give in to western pressure over an item of “tradition”.
Cismeat!
CMC fnord!
Mmm, I loves me some salmon meat!
You and I have different definitions of non-violent. I see the Sea Shepherds as hell-of-violent.
And even staunch opponents of Japanese whaling agree with you there. The following is from the website of Greenpeace:
I gather it has something to do with the general perception that cetaceans are generally both intelligent to the point of plausible sentience as well as endangered. The public generally takes a dim view to the killing of animals considered intelligent as opposed to those considered dumber than a sack of bricks.
I also strongly doubt that the average Westerner has ever eaten whale and as such struggles to perceive them as food. I have more than a few acquaintances (who, to be fair, are not the brightest bulbs) who are convinced that the Japanese hunt whales for little more than tawdry sport.
We’re not talking about biology research here. The goal of research whaling is to assess whether commercial whaling can resume without impacting the whale population.
Well, I can’t imagine saying the first statement, since it’s so unspecific. And most of our dinners contain meat, so it’d be like saying “Let’s eat tonight”. No content. But, I do consider fish to be meat, so, sure, it would meet my incredibly vague expectations.
I will admit that there are some people who use “meat” to mean “red meat”. I never claimed it didn’t happen, I simply claimed that that usage is becoming less common.
But we can play the example game all day. If someone said “I don’t eat meat”, would you plan trout for the menu?
The Jewish dietary laws come to mind. Meat means mammalian meat.
Whales are generally believed to be smarter, and thus more human, than our ordinary meat animals. They sing to each other, in a way that may be conveying semantic content (talking). Of course, the same may be true of elephants, and pigs are pretty bright. But I think that’s the big difference.
Except in the Jewish dietary laws, whales are fish, not “animals”. Specifically, they are fish that have no scales (and arguably, no fins) so they aren’t kosher fish, but they are fish.
What research are they doing? Link to scientific papers published by the Japanese whaling industry.
And that would be nice if that’s all the Japanese killed. But they dont:
*
…detected migratory whales such as the endangered Humpback[106][107] and endangered Gray whales,[108][109] as well as the threatened Finback whale,[110][111] and the non-endangered Bryde’s whales.[112]*
and :In Japan, not only humpback, minke, and sperm whales, but many other smaller toothed whales, including species such as western gray, the endangered North Pacific right, and northern fin whales have been targets of illegal captures utilizing harpoons for dolphin hunts or intentionally drive whales into nets. Reports are later filed with administrative organs or research institutions as cases of entanglements where fishermen tried their best to save whales. Products from internationally protected species’ meat can also be found on markets even today mostly originating as “by-products” of entanglements, and there has been a case in which it was revealed that at least some humpbacks with other species were illegally hunted in EEZs of anti-whaling nations such as off the coast of Mexico or South Africa, and the whalers tried to transport the catch to Japan by hiring vessels from other countries and even trying to go on overland routes within other nations.[115] Japan kept official hunts of endangered species such as North Pacific right whales until 1994[116]|, but intentional by-catches of endangered still continue to present in unknown scales.
Neither do they chew their cud or have split hooves.