Another reason why it's not a good idea to continue whaling

When I was listening to the BBC World Service this morning I heard a very disturbing story about how a recent report by a group of experts in various fields related to oceanography, showed that the condition of the ocean is much worse than expected. They think that we might be entering a period when many species of marine animals are in danger of becoming extinct. Although the earth has experienced mass extinctions before, this one may be the worst in human history. The greatest threats are caused by global warming. But, increased pollution of the oceans, the fact that the ocean is becoming more acidic, and overfishing are all contributing to the problem. The decline in the condition of the ocean is increasing at a much faster pace than previously thought. The various factors seem to work synergistically to accelerate the decline. For example, pollution sticks to small particles of plastic on the bottom of the sea. Because of that, fish which live in the bottom of the ocean are more likely to consume the pollutants. They carry it throughout the food chain. All the way up to bigger fish and whales.

This just provides more evidence for why we need to protect marine resources, including whales. Our continued consumption of large quantities of them can push them to the brink of extinction.

The following article explains in detail what the BBC World Service radio reported on this morning's news:
Black, Richard. "World's oceans in 'shocking' decline."BBC News -- Science & Environment, 20 June 2011: Web. 21 Jun 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13796479>.
An older article I found on the BBC news site told how even sharks, especially ones that swim in the open ocean, are disappearing at an alarming rate, mostly due to overfishing, sometimes just for their fins. You can refer to that article by clicking on the link below:
"Threat to ocean sharks increases." BBC News, 22 Feb 2007: Web. 21 Jun 2011. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6385995.stm>.

Survey on Whaling

I've created a short survey which presents questions about interest in environmental issues and attitudes toward whaling. If you can spare 10-15 minutes of your time to answer the questions, it would be much appreciated. The survey was created at surveymonkey.com.

Making discoveries through using "word clouds"

Word clouds (also called "tag clouds") are used for various purposes. They can be just decorative, but they can also reveal various things about text used to create the cloud. The following two word clouds were created from Greenpeace's page on Japanese whaling:

Greenpeace, . "Japanese Whaling." Greenpeace International. 2011. Web. 2 Jun 2011. <http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/>.

You'll notice that Greenpeace emphasizes that it is "the Japanese" who are doing the whaling. "Southern Ocean," another way of saying the Antarctic Ocean, also appears many times, and so does the word sanctuary. This suggests that Greenpeace wants to stress that Japan is sending their whaling vessels to the southern ocean, which was designated as a sanctuary for whales and other sea life.
 
The following word clouds were made using the Q & A page of the Japan Whaling Association, a pro-whaling publicity page that tries to present the whalers' perspective on the whaling issue.

JWA. "Questions & Answers about Whaling." Official Home Page of the Japan Whaling Association. The Japan Whaling Association (JWA), 2011. Web. 3 Jun 2011. < http://www.whaling.jp/english/qa.html >.

 

 You can see from the word clouds that "research" is emphasized and they are trying to promote the idea that the whales are being caught for "scientific" purposes. Unlike, the word "hunt," which is fairly prominent in the Greenpeace word cloud, the more benign "catches" appears 11 times in the JWA web page.