The Way to Stop Whaling is Changing Japanese Minds

[MrDibble]

@bup

In my mind, the anti-fur war has been won.

I’m not so sure - I’m seeing it back on mags like Vogue etc. Also, a lot of the currently-trend-setting hip hop crowd seem to have no problem with fur.

To quote Wiki: [

Since the turn of the millennium, however, sales worldwide have soared to record highs, fuelled by radically new techniques for working with fur, and a sharp rise in disposable income in China and Russia.

](Fur farming - Wikipedia)

[Koxinga]

@even_sven

But something about Japan’s attitude towards nature- especially nature that is not particularly close to Japan- rubs me the wrong way.

Would you say they are . . . inscrutable?

Japan’s overfishing problem is well-known. They have systematically driven species after species to the verge of extinction, moving on only when there isn’t enough to catch to be profitable. And they are not just wrecking their own backyard. They have a far enough to reach to decimate the waters as far away as Africa. Demand continues to rise and nothing has been done to stop the historically unprecidented amounts of fish the average Japanese person now expects to consume.

They’re like . . . some kind of peril to the world . . . I’m grasping for an adjective–perhaps a color? A peril of a certain ochre hue?

[Isamu]

An interesting factor to consider in the whaling debate, now that depletion of fish has been brought up in this thread, is that many whales eat a hell of a lot of fish per day. I’m not sure of the actual numbers - perhaps our Oceanographers could help out here? I’m sure it varies by species anyway.

So does killing a whale, which is a predator of fish, serve to bolster the fish population?

[even_sven]

Ignorance fought about the rising fish consumption.

I don’t think it’s in any way unfair to point out that different cultures have different ideas about their responsiblity towards the environment. I promise you that I can walk out right now and return within an hour or two with some product made from endangered species. Few people would see anything wrong with my buying it. This is very different than what you’d typically find in America. And, from my point of view,I think it’s a more destructive ideology that I hope people rethink.

[Acid_Lamp]

@Sitnam

Apparently only Norway and Japan feel so concerned about the true welfare of whales they’re the only ones to continue to do this kind of research. Unfortuenetly they’re OBLIGATED to harvest whats left. Why is fate so cruel?

Your sarcasm aside, It is a well known, and accepted scientific practice to harvest representative animals of a population to establish a profile of health of the whole population. It is an espescially legitimate practice in the case of marine animals that are often migratory and conduct much of their lives in relative secrecy. The scale back in marine mammal research has been predominantly due to political pressure rather than a lack of necessity. We still utilize this practice with many other marine species that are less media friendly and have learned quite a deal about them that has boosted out ability to mitigate our impact on their populations.

Nobody is playing the martyr here, not even the Japanese. They have no desire to waste a valuable commodity; furthermore they shouldn’t waste it.

[MrDibble]

@Acid_Lamp

Your sarcasm aside, It is a well known, and accepted scientific practice to harvest representative animals of a population to establish a profile of health of the whole population.

I don’t know - there are lots of terrestrial large mammals that we check up on without killing them. You’d think we’d develop the tools to do this with whales, too. I’m thinking remote probes that insert a satellite tag, sample a small core, maybe conduct an ultrasound scan…

…I’ll be in the lab.

[Wallenstein]

@Isamu

An interesting factor to consider in the whaling debate, now that depletion of fish has been brought up in this thread, is that many whales eat a hell of a lot of fish per day. I’m not sure of the actual numbers - perhaps our Oceanographers could help out here? I’m sure it varies by species anyway.

So does killing a whale, which is a predator of fish, serve to bolster the fish population?

Minke whales eat plankton, not fish. They have no teeth, just baleen plates to filter teeny-tiny critters from the water. There are gazillions of plankton so that’s not really an issue. They will eat small fish but it’s mainly krill, plankton etc.