There are only three countries in the world that continue to openly hunt whales for commercial purposes: Norway, Japan, and Iceland. After a two-year break, the International Fund for Animal Welfare just reported yesterday that Iceland is poised to resume its whaling this summer by setting a quota of 168 minke whales and 150 fin whales.
This is very disappointing news for the whales themselves, since the killing of a whale may take as long as two excruciating hours of suffering and—in the case of fin whales—there is a danger that they will become extinct because they’re officially categorized as a “vulnerable” species. It is also a step in the wrong direction for those who have fought to bring an end to commercial whaling in Iceland and around the world. Next to the blue whale, fin whales are the second-largest animals in the world and losing them would be a great tragedy.
Due to America’s threats to “acquire” Greenland, Iceland has been debating whether to join the EU to give it some protection if Donald Trump decides to take over Iceland as well. Since the EU is strongly against commercial whaling, it could jeopardize their chances of gaining membership.
Even though the present Icelandic government has the goal of ending the practice of whaling, it may still go on until, at least, 2029 because current whaling licenses will be valid until then.
The arguments against continuing on with whaling have not changed. It is unspeakably cruel as the whales are painfully harpooned and then chased for up to two hours before they bleed to death. As was already mentioned, fin whales face extinction through a combination of hunting and threats to their environment. Also, Iceland doesn’t even consume the whale meat. It is mostly exported to Japan!
That brings up the question: Does Japan still hunt fin whales? Sadly, the answer is “yes.” Since Japan launched a new whale processing “mothership,” the Kangei Maru, in 2024, Japan’s Japan’s Fisheries Agency Council decided to allow the killing of fin whales. In 2024 the allowable quota was 59. Japan is doing this despite there being a global moratorium on commercial whaling, according to Ocean Care, an organization dedicated to marine wildlife protection.
Many people in Japan are familiar with Paul Watson as he was one of the founders of the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd. He captained ships that challenged Japanese whaling vessels in the Southern Ocean (Antarctica) that went there to catch mostly minke whales, even though that ocean had long been considered a sanctuary for whales, and that species in particular was in the "near threatened" category.
As was explained in other posts on this blog, Japanese whalers defied a moratorium on commercial whaling that had been in place by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) since 1986. In 1994, the IWC declared that the Southern Ocean should be kept a sanctuary for whales, further prohibiting commercial whaling there. Still, Japan sent whaling fleets to kill hundreds of whales under the guise of "research" even though the whale meat and whale products ended up in markets in Japan.
Keeping that background in mind, Sea Shepherd took it as their mission to disrupt and interfere with Japanese whaling operations as much as they could, successfully saving the lives of hundreds of whales. This continued until 2017, when the whaling vessels started to be equipped with military-grade equipment that made them almost impossible to track by Sea Shepherd. Unfortunately, the methods that Sea Shepherd used were controversial and not supported by other environmental and animal protection NGOs as they included:
ramming the whaling boats with their vessels
throwing bottles of foul-smelling liquids onto the decks of the whaling ships
using flares, smoke bombs, and lasers to annoy (and possibly harm) the crew of the Japanese whaling ships
plugging drain outlets of the whaling vessels
Due to those actions, Paul Watson himself was accused by the Japanese government of damaging property, injuring a crew member, and obstructing business. Authorities in Japan issued a warrant for his arrest, and due to international cooperation on bringing people suspected of committing crimes to justice, he was arrested by police in Greenland in 2024 and detained there for several months before the Danish government, that has jurisdiction over Greenland, decided to release him, rejecting Japan's extradition request.
Since then, Interpol (an international police agency) decided to suspend the "red notice" against Paul Watson. That means he won't face arrest when traveling around the world...at least for the time being. If he were to travel to Japan, though, he would be immediately arrested.
Depending on one's perspective, Paul Watson can be considered an eco-terrorist or a hero for protecting the environment, especially fragile sea ecosystems.
Watch the embedded video to hear how Paul Watson describes how Interpol has been weaponized by States to target environmental defenders. He also tries to justify what many would see as Sea Shepherd's rather extreme tactics.
Murray, A., & Boyd, A. (2024, December 17). Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson freed in Greenland after five months. BBC.COM. Retrieved October 9, 2025, from https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj49w2vxkneo
Recently, on social media, I've been seeing videos posted showing polar bears, beluga whales, and other marine mammals being saved by humans.
They are clearly injured, and sometimes even bleeding, at the beginning of the video, but, thanks to the intervention of kind sailors, they are nursed back to health and released into the wild again. These animals always show gratitude toward their benefactors by snuggling up to them or looking back one last time before they float off on an ice berg or descend into the depths of the sea.
These videos are obviously AI-generated but they are not identified as such and comments indicate that many people believe them to be genuine, expressing admiration and thanks for the men (they're always men and never women) who rescue these pitiful creatures who got tangled in ropes or mangled by a ship's propeller. These images are part of a larger body of postings that I've been seeing on social media that either misidentify animal and plant life or post images of natural phenomena that have been manipulated by AI in strange ways. For example, photos of extraordinarily colored birds are shown with outrageous color patterns that clearly don't appear in nature. I have had friends who have fallen for them and believed they depicted reality.
As someone who loves to learn about plants and animals, it disturbs me that misinformation is frivolously disseminated. I suppose the purpose is to get clicks and likes and to generate income. It's becoming easier for people to use AI to generate posts painlessly, and the AI can even figure out what social media users are likely to engage with. My guess is that I've been pegged as a sucker for a cute whale or polar bear, which is why they're appearing in my feeds.
The Kangei Maru is seen sailing off the coast of Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, on Friday, March 29, 2024. (The Yomiuri Shimbun)
Inexplicably, considering the fact that there is almost zero demand for whale meat by the general public in Japan and throughout the world, the construction of a brand new whaling fleet “mother ship,” Kangei Maru, was just completed. Owned by Kyodo Senpaku Co., it was reported in The Japan News that it has the capacity to “haul up 70-ton fin whales, two to three times larger than Bryde’s and sei whales loaded by the Nisshin Maru, because its slipway has a shallower slope than the predecessor’s.” The Nisshin Maru was decommissioned last November (2023) and the Kangei Maru is meant to replace it.
The Nisshin Maru, infamously, processed 17,072 whales caught by “catcher boats” since 1991. Some of the whales were processed ostensively for “research” purposes and others for commercial purposes, but, regardless of the stated purpose, the vast majority of the processed catch ended up in markets. While it plied the Southern Ocean, it was occasionally rammed by the far smaller Sea Shepherd anti-whaling vessels in a David and Goliath struggle over the protection vs. the slaughter of these majestic creatures far from Japan’s shores.
Tired of pretending to slaughter whales for “research” purposes, and always getting criticized by the international community for engaging in a practice most of the rest of the world considered to be barbaric, Japan quit its membership in the International Whaling Commission in 2019 and resumed the undisguised and unapologetic commercial exploitation of whales.
The replacement of Nisshin Maru with the larger capacity Kangei Maru shows Japan’s resolve to go against the prevailing world sentiment, the best interests of Japanese tax payers who will be subsidizing these expensive and wasteful whaling operations, and the protests of environmentalists and animal rights activists.
The president of Kyodo Senpaku, the owners of Kangei Maru, was quoted as saying, apparently without irony that “It’s important to protect marine resources, and we are the ones responsible for that,” He was further quoted as saying: “I believe that continuing (whaling) will benefit both Japan and the world.” He didn’t say how Japan or the world would benefit nor whether whales themselves would stand to benefit from these developments.
Since 2020 there have been hundreds of incidents involving orcas (so-called killer whales) and boats. Some people have characterized these encounters as "orca attacks." Most of them have happened in the waters off the Iberian Peninsula, especially in and around the Strait of Gibraltar, a waterway between Spain and Morocco.
In some cases orcas damaged boats by repeatedly ramming them and even breaking off their rudders, the boat's steering apparatus. People have been terribly frightened and, understandably, felt under attack. However, the fact remains that orcas in the wild have never attacked directly (much less eaten) humans. It is much more often the case that humans hurt orcas through accidental ship collisions, entangling them in abandoned fishing gear, or through acoustic damage caused by navy ships, explosions, or underwater mining operations.
Some commentators have sided with the orcas and others show more sympathy for the boats that they sometimes target. A recent article in the Atlantic by Jacob Stern has the ridiculous title “Killer Whales Are Not Our Friends: Stop rooting for orcas ramming boats.” While a Washington Post editorial, looking at the matter more from the whale's perspective, has the title "Why are orcas attacking boats? Hint: It’s not a war on humans.
The recent behavior of the orcas is unusual and seems to be something new. Scientists haven't found the reason for it but there are some theories. One theory is that after an orca that scientists called "White Gladis" was accidentally injured by a ship, she taught juvenile orca to attack every ship they came across. This theory isn't favored by marine biologists who study orca in depth. They think it's more likely that the orca are exhibiting playful behavior.
Deborah Giles, the research director for the NPO Wild Orca, has noted that orca sometimes engage in short-lived "fads," like moving the anchors of crab pots, hitching rides with larger whales, swimming around with salmon on their heads, or, perhaps most recently, messing around with boats around the Iberian Peninsula. Deborah Giles believes that the orca will eventually get bored interfering with boats and move on to doing some other naughty behavior.
Hopefully, those sailing boats through their waters will not try to get revenge on the orca. A simple way to stop attacks by the orca seems to be just stopping the boat's engine. Could it be that they are irritated by the engines of boats and want to send us a message, "We've had it with your noisy boats!"
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is a very respected advocacy group which works to protect natural habitats and biodiversity. Therefore, I thought they would have a balanced view of the threats posed to whales other than whaling. It's important to look at non-whaling factors that may be threatening whales because they influence how vulnerable whales are and whether they should be better protected.
I found out that, in addition to whaling, whales are hurt by the following factors:
getting caught in fishing gear (by-catch)
climate change
ship collisions
toxic contamination
oil and gas development
habitat degradation
Whales, especially dolphins and porpoises (which are types of whales), get caught in nets accidentally when fishermen are trying to catch fish. This is called "by-catch." Since dolphins and porpoises need to breath air in order to live, they suffocate when they're caught in nets, so they can't just be thrown back into the sea.
Climate change is altering the whole ocean ecosystem and affecting the krill and other sea life that whales depend on to survive.
Fast moving ships sometimes strike whales and seriously injure or kill them. Some environmental groups want to impose lower speed limits on large ships, especially during critical whale migration periods.
Oil and gas development can hurt whales in various ways. For one thing, it releases toxic substances into the environment.
Finally, the natural habitat for whales is gradually degraded, partly by climate change and partly by the fact that the sea is getting more crowded with ships, pleasure craft, whale watching boats, oil rigs, etc.
According to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (part of the National Ocean Service, NOAA in the US), because marine animals, such as whales and dolphins, make use of sound for communication, feeding, and navigation, acoustic (i.e., sound) disturbances caused by dredging, mining, military activities, or boat traffic may affect whales and their behavior.
For all these reasons, whaling may be the additional threat to whales which sends some species into extinction. One of the reasons Japan and countries such as Norway and Iceland give for continuing to carry out whaling include the idea that ocean stocks of the whales they are catching are at "healthy" or sustainable levels. However, as we can see from all of the threats to whales and to all marine life (mentioned above), there is a cumulative negative effect on the various species and whaling can be the straw that, so to speak, breaks the whale's back. All the more reason to stop whaling immediately.
I knew that whales were a kind of reservoir of carbon, but I didn’t know just how much carbon they stored. Apparently, it’s enough to make a measurable contribution to the problem of the warming of the earth and the oceans. Basically, whales remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the way the eat and poop. It is described in this excellent Ted Talk I heard recently given by an economist, Ralph Chami, who became an ally of whales after he got to see a Blue Whale up close and when he learned how important they are in helping to regulate the climate.
Whales are useful for controlling carbon dioxide in the air because a major food on their menu is called krill, creatures that look like little shrimp. Krill, in turn, eat microscopic organisms called phytoplankton, which take so the equivalent of 4 Amazon forests of CO2 out of the atmosphere each year. By eating the krill, whales are storing much of that carbon in their bodies, so it doesn’t get released back into the air. When whales die, they sink to the bottom of the deep ocean. Anything below 1000 meters stays put in the ocean virtually forever. Even better, when the whales poop, they provide fertilizer for phytoplankton, which then grab even more CO2 from the atmosphere. Due to their tremendous size, the poop of whales contributes A LOT to nourishing the phytoplankton.
As an economist, Ralph Chami realized that he had to translate the services that whales do for the planet (that is, sequester huge amounts of carbon and therefore help mitigate global warming) in ways that people understand: dollars and cents. So, he estimated that the services a single whale does to capture carbon in the course of their lifetime could be valued at 3 million dollars. It turns out that, on land, elephants also do an excellent job storing carbon, not in their bodies but by fertilizing trees, which in turn sequester carbon. He valued their services to the earth to be about 2.6 million dollars each.
Armed with this information Ralph Chami has been trying to create a market place where companies who need to off-set their carbon footprints purchase credits from countries or areas that are taking measures to protect whales or elephants, or grow sea grass, which is also good at capturing carbon dioxide.
It may see cold and calculating to give a monetary value to living things such as elephants and whales, but, if it helps to protect them, it can be a positive thing.
This blog has been in existence since 2011. It was mainly started to serve as an example for students taking a seminar focused on using web resources to research controversial issues at a private university in Tokyo. However, it has been maintained for more than 12 years out of interest and in light of the fact that thousands of visitors have come to the blog and may have enjoyed reading some of the posts.
The situation regarding Japan's role in whaling operations has gotten somewhat better over the last several years since the international court of justice demanded in 2014 that Japan end its annual hunt of whales. It complied with that only after pulling out of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 2019. When it left the IWC, the Japanese government said that it would limit commercial whaling to within its own territorial waters. So, they would no longer have the pretense that they were engaged in whaling for "research purposes" when it was actually commercial in nature, as they did for many years
Unfortunately, however, the British newspaper, the Guardian reported in February of 2023 that a Japanese company, Kyodo Senpaku, is currently building a huge factory whaling ship, which they call a "mother ship." That ship will be capable of sailing 13,000 KM and can stay at sea for as long as two months. The idea is that smaller ships will capture the whales and the bigger "mother ship" will process the whale meat, freezing and storing it.
Minke whales, including a 1-year-old juvenile, being loaded aboard Nisshin Maru. This photograph was taken in the Southern Ocean by agents from the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service vessel, during a 2008 surveillance mission.
The government of Australia is strongly opposed to this planned return to whaling in the Antarctic Ocean, which Australia sees as its backyard, with whales in its waters that travel in and out of the so-called Southern Ocean. The Japanese government gave assurances to Australia’s environment minister, Tanya Plibsersek, that they were not funding this "mother ship" and claimed that it was a private endeavor. Given that it is highly unlikely that any future whaling operation can turn a profit, it's almost surely the case that the Japanese government is subsidizing the project with tax payer yen.
The Guardian quotes the president of Kyodo Senpaku, Hideki Tokoro, as saying that the "mother ship" was intended to pass on “whaling culture" to future generations. As was noted elsewhere in this blog, this kind of whaling operation, with its exploding harpoons and huge vessels is a far cry from the traditional small-scale whaling that Japan engaged in for hundreds of years. It is something that Japan took up following the example of Western nations that have long since given up the practice as being barbaric and not in line with what is now known about the value of whales to the oceans' ecosystems.
It looks like the Japanese government is now outsourcing the tired old claim that Japan's "whaling culture must be preserved" to private companies. The other claim, that it is needed for future "food security," is laughable given the unsustainable nature of the industry, huge ships using fossil fuels to travel thousands of miles to catch animals that are no longer part of the diet of modern Japanese.
I watched “A Whale of a Tale” last night and found it disappointing and annoying although I understood the admirable motivation of its director, Megumi Sasaki, and respect the fact that she spent 6 years of her life making it. In an interview (Sasaki, 2018) that was conducted by the Asia Society soon after the release of the film, she mentioned how disgusted she was by the total breakdown in communication between the anti-whaling activists, the filmmakers of “The Cove,” and the fishermen and townspeople of Taiji. She wanted to make a film that showed the town’s perspective, and that of the fishermen, in a more balanced way.
On the plus side, she did succeed in her film to humanize the fishermen, Taiji officials, and citizens who were mostly vilified in “The Cove.” As a Japanese filmmaker who was not perceived as being aligned with activist groups, she gained the trust of the fishermen, mayor, and even local right-wing activists in order to get their candid comments. “A Whale of a Tale” uncovered the hatred and xenophobia that existed on both sides, emanating from the activists, foreign critics of the dolphin/whale slaughter, the fishermen, the rightist defenders of the drive, and from the townspeople.
Those in Taiji, whether they were directly connected with the whaling industry or not, felt under attack. They had been losing the media battle abroad, mainly thanks to “The Cove” and the notoriety it caused, but gained domestic sympathy because they were seen as underdogs defending their ancient traditions. In the intervening years, between the filming of “The Cove” and “A Whale of a Tale,” the fishermen and local officials seemed to realize they had to change their approach to activists, journalists, and filmmakers.
They turned on a charm offensive for the cameras, in the case of the more recent documentary, without changing the brutality of their dolphin hunt drive methods or the bloody consequences of them, except for some lip service about more humanely severing the dolphins' cervical spine. Nor did they make any attempt to try to justify the continuation of the hunt in the 21st century, when the vast majority of Japanese eschew whale meat the harm done to captive animals is well known (Bearzi, 2014).
The claims of neutrality or objectivity by the filmmaker, Megumi Sasaki, and one of the film’s chief protagonists, Jay Alabaster (a doctoral student and AP stringer), is laughable. The very reason why “The Cove” gained the notoriety that it did was because of the coup that it pulled off in successfully (albeit clandestinely and through trickery) of showing the drive hunt in its full gory detail, despite the best efforts of the “fishermen” to shield the bloodletting with tarps and to intimidate the activists/filmmakers. Jay Alabaster is both a character in the doc and the vehicle for the film’s main contention that things could be so much better if the two sides (portrayed simplistically as Americans and people in Taiji, or the Japanese in general) could just understand each other and “get along.”
Only token consideration is given to the whales/dolphins themselves and Alabaster becomes an apologist for the Fisheries Agency/ Fishermen’s argument that the species being slaughtered are not endangered and “only” about 2000 of them are killed each year. At the end of the film, Alabaster sits down for a beer and a meal of whale meat with the fishermen who treat him condescendingly like their pet “good gaijin,” unlike those nasty gaijin who want them to stop making Taiji’s cove red with blood each year.
The biggest lost opportunity in the film was that it did not give greater screen time to local activists. A Japanese activist who worked since the late 1960s, and her younger protege, to protect dolphins and whales were interviewed in the film for just a few minutes despite offering valuable insights that could have been expanded upon. An excellent article appeared in the Japan Times (O’dwyer, 2015) explaining how much domestic activism was set back by “The Cove” and the confrontational tactics of Sea Shepherd. That outside pressure made it possible for The Fisheries Agency, right-wing agitators, and the fishermen to paint any resistance to the hunt as anti-Japanese, a threat to Japanese cultural identity, and a menace to Japan’s sovereignty and autonomy. This distracted from the sheer barbarity and gruesomeness of the slaughter and put that on the back burner.
The most fundamental problem with the film “A Whale of a Tale” is its argument that the two sides (Japan/Taiji fishermen and townspeople vs. foreigners/activists) misunderstand each other and can all be happier if they came to see each other’s perspective. This was beyond naive. The naivety of it was laid bare in a particularly revealing scene that appeared late in the documentary, one in which Jay Alabaster met with a relatively young whaler equipped with some of the recent Tweets and streamed video by Sea Shepherd (and copious comments on those Tweets).
Just a single day of tweeting filled pages and pages, whereas the town of Taiji and the fishermen had hardly any social media presence at all. One of the Tweets showed a streaming video of dolphins being slaughtered beyond a barrier of tarps that had been set up. Wind gusts blew the tarp up exposing the bloodshed and reddening sea. Alabaster was trying to make the point that if only the fishermen and the town could get their side of the story out they’d be able to compete against the foreign social media onslaught. What the fisherman was concerned with, however, was how they could better shield the slaughter by tying down the tarp better. The “sides” understand each other only too well. Alabaster and Sasaki were a boon to Taiji's (and the Fisheries Agency's) PR efforts but did nothing to advance any true "meeting of minds." Their lack of care or concern for the thousands of dolphins and whales being killed each year was obvious. A anthropocentric worldview can not easily be reconciled with a biocentric one, and differences in these worldviews go beyond cultural differences or mere preferences.
In the film, one of the Taiji fishermen made an excellent point and he did so quietly and earnestly. He asked why slaughterhouses in the US didn't carry out their activities openly, freely allowing cameras so all could see what was being done. Why indeed? He said this to point out the hypocrisy of what he perceived to be unfair criticism of the Taiji slaughter. Setting aside points that might be made about wild cetaceans vs. livestock raised for human consumption, of course, a more genuinely biocentric approach would just as vigorously advocate for an end to the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji as it would the slaughter of hogs in Iowa. The quickening pace of our biosphere's destruction will, hopefully, advance a more consistent biocentric worldview...but it's unfortunate that that's what it may take before we start to come around. Empathy is not only needed to bring people together, but also to bring about respect for sentient creatures of all stripes, even if they happen to be striped dolphins.
“A Whale of a Tale” (2018) is a documentary about the controversy surrounding the Taiji dolphin hunt and it is meant as a response to the 2009 Oscar-winning anti-whale hunting documentary, “The Cove.” The film director, Megumi Sasaki, was disgusted by the communication breakdown that occurred between the people of Taiji and the activists/ film makers and she wanted to present a more balanced view of the issue, listening deeply to both sides (or at least the humans’ perspectives as the whales/dolphins suffer silently).
I respect Megumi Sasaki as a filmmaker as I watched her wonderful documentary about amateur art collectors called “Herb & Dorothy,” which was well made, entertaining, and deeply moving. I just purchased “A Whale of a Tale” on Amazon and plan to watch it this weekend. After that, I’ll report my reactions to it in this blog.
A student in a seminar I’m teaching (at a private university in Tokyo) on research and critical thinking recommended a Taiji-related documentary, directed by another female Japanese filmmaker, Keiko Yagi.
Although “The Cove” may have presented a rather one-sided view of the issue form the activists’ and dolphins’/ whales’ perspectives, Keiko Yagi’s documentary, “Behind the Cove” seems to parrot the talking points of Japan Fisheries Agency and vilifies activists, portraying anyone who opposes the annual slaughter of dolphins/whales in Taiji as a Japan basher and someone who couldn’t possibly respect Japanese culture and traditions, neglecting the fact that many Japanese also oppose the slaughter. I plan to watch this documentary as well and report on it in this blog too. Stay tuned.
A story that appeared to report a terrible incident in which 16 members of a Japanese whaling crew were eaten alive by orcas (killer whales) was published in the satirical website "World News Daily Report.” Although most people visiting the site and seeing this story probably could recognize it as satire, when it was retweeted and posted on various social media sites it was mistaken by many people as a true story.
Using the excellent list of criteria for how to evaluate sources, from New Mexico State University Library (http://nmsu.libguides.com/c.php?g=381561&p=2585271), we can see that the most important question for quickly assessing the truthfulness of the killer whale story comes under the heading “Scope, Coverage & Relevance”: Who is the intended audience? Fortunately, the reader can find the answer to this question easily by scrolling to the bottom of the page where it says “World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content.” This tells us that the content is meant to amuse and entertain. After we know the purpose of the website questions about “authority” (i.e., the credentials of the author), the timeliness of the content, and issues related to bias, accuracy and quality are all irrelevant.
What may have led some people who read the article quickly to be fooled by it was that there was plenty of factual information about Japan’s whaling operations mentioned. Just to name a few, the factory ship was identified as the Nisshin Maru (which is accurate), and it was also correctly noted that Japan had lost a ruling in the international court forcing them to stop whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
If one did a Google search for information about killer whales eating members of a Japanese whaling crew, an article would be found from the fairly respectable British newspaper, Independent, with the headline “Japanese whaling crew 'eaten alive by killer whales, 16 dead' story definitely a hoax.” This shows the importance of checking outside sources. The Independent article points out how unlikely it would be for a representative of Greenpeace to say the following: "It seems that Japan just doesn’t give a damn about international law. The waste of life is always a shame, but the whales are not to blame here, they were only doing what they are born to do: kill for food." There were also spelling and grammatical errors in the article that should have hinted that something was wrong.
Below is a reference to the article in the Independent identifying the article as a hoax:
Disturbingly, some of those who had believed the story after seeing it reposted on Facebook or retweeted on Twitter thought that the Japanese whalers got what they deserved and rejoiced.
I searched on COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English—https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/) for the occurrences, —within 4 spots of each other—of when the word “Japanese" collocates with “whaling.” In total 41 such collocations were found. Thirty in academic contexts, five in news, and three in spoken English, while only one was found in fiction. This was a fairly low occurrence rate in a corpus comprised of more than half a billion words.
It was discovered that all of the ones from academic contexts were found in either of two articles that were published in the years 2000 and 2002. Some further research revealed that the articles came from two issues of the same academic journal, one that is based in America but focuses on Asian affairs. These are the citations of the articles:
BAILEY, J; MCKAY, B. Are Japanese Attitudes Toward Whaling America-Bashing? A Response to Tanno and Hamazaki. Asian Affairs: An American Review. 29, 3, 148, Sept. 2002. ISSN: 00927678.
TANNO, D; HAMAZAKI, T. Is American Opposition to Whaling Anti-Japanese?. Asian Affairs: An American Review. 27, 2, 81, June 2000. ISSN: 00927678.
The article by the Japanese co-authors contends that American ethnocentrism and an anti-Japanese bias led to negative feelings by Americans toward Japanese whaling operations. They also claim that Japan was singled out for its whaling activities even though Iceland and Norway also conducted their own annual whaling expeditions. Tanno and Hamazaki charge that environmental groups such as Greenpeace tend to focus their protests on Japan instead of the Western countries that also engage in whaling, which they believe amounts to Japan bashing.
In response to the Tanno and Hamazaki article, Bailey and McKay convincingly counter that Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and other environmental NGOs have extensively protested against the whaling of Western countries such as Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. They assert that Japan was not exclusively targeted. In fact, Sea Shepherd sunk the Norwegian whaling vessel Willassen Senior in 2007, something it never did to a Japanese whaling vessel. Not to justify their actions, but this is evidence that the pressure put on Japan’s whaling was not evidence of any sort of racism or “Japan bashing.”
The news stories that were found in COCA ranging from 2010 to 2014, concerned the threatened legal measures taken by Australia against Japan to halt Japan’s Antarctic whaling program, which Japan was claiming to be necessary for scientific purposes. When Japan did not respond to the pressure put on it by Australia, the Australian government sued Japan in the International Court of Justice in the Hague. In 2014, a decision was made against Japan in the court. It was found that “Japan’s program failed to justify the large number of minke whales it takes under its [then] current Antarctic program.”
Because the academic articles that the COCA samples came from fell on both sides of the whaling issue, they were balanced in their stances. Only a few of them showed some bias:
* Sympathetic toward the Japanese (in the face of aggression tactics by the conservation group Sea Shepherd (3)
* Expresses opinion that environmental NPOs are more likely to target Japanese whaling operations than Norwegian ones. (2)
* Siding with environmentalists or with countries opposing whaling (pointing out that the Japanese whaling industry is heavily subsidized and “scientific whaling” a guise for commercial whaling) (3)
Four days ago, the whaling season opened for Icelandic whaling operations. Authorities in Iceland granted a quota of 161 fin whales (one species of large whales) to whalers in 2018. Since they didn’t reach their quota last year they are allowed to kill as many as 191 fin whales, which are an endangered species. They consider it economically worthwhile to hunt whales because Japan has loosened up its restrictions on imports of whale meat from Iceland. This is a strange decision on Japan’s part because Japanese consumers cannot even eat all the whale meat that is the result of Japan’s whaling industry (disguised as “scientific whaling”).
Fin whales are huge whales that are much bigger than the minke whales that make up the majority of the ones Japanese whaling ships kill in the Southern Ocean. The diagram I’m attaching to this posting shows the relative size of the various species of whales, dolphins, and other Cetaceans.
The article in the Guardian reveals that it is mostly curious tourists in Iceland who eat whale meat at restaurants and only 35.4% of Icelanders said they supported the fin whale hunt in a poll taken in October of 2017. Just like in Japan, environmental and animal rights groups in Iceland insist that the decision to kill whales isn’t based on “real market needs” and doesn’t reflect public opinion on whaling. It seems to be done just to keep a dying industry alive and for reasons of nostalgia. To kill harmless creatures for such reasons is senseless and cruel.
This is a summary of two stories about the 2017 Whale Hunt by Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean. One of them was a Reuters wire service story that ran in the Japan Times online paper just after the Japanese whaling fleet set off from Shimonoseki (in November). It reported how the Australian Prime Minister was “deeply disappointed” in Japan’s continued whaling operations. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull brought up the issue with Shinzo Abe when they met in Sydney during a January 2017 meeting. The Australian Environment Minister, Josh Frydenberg, reminded everyone that Japan’s pretext for its continued whaling was fraudulent because “It is not necessary to kill whales in order to study them.”
The second article came from a French wire service called Agence France-Presse. It reported on the return of the Japanese whaling fleet from the Southern Ocean to Shimonoseki after it caught 333 minke whales which was in violation of a worldwide moratorium (since 1986) on catching whales and was strongly opposed by Australia and New Zealand.
This BBC article by Wingfield-Hayes is excellent in that it puts Japanese whaling in historical and cultural perspective, but it also brings up some interesting facts which few people are aware of. One thing I learned from the article was that although Japan had done small scale COASTAL whaling for centuries, it was General Douglas MacAuthur who, after the 2nd World War, encouraged Japan to transform two gigantic US Navy tankers into factory ships that were capable of sailing to the Southern Ocean to catch whales. From the end of the war until the mid 1960s whale meat was the main source of meat that was eaten in Japan. According to the article at “its peak in 1964 Japan killed more than 24,000 whales in one year.”
So, whaling did play an important role in feeding a hungry Japan after the War. The problem is that these days whaling does not provide any economic or nutritional benefit to Japan. On the contrary, the Japanese taxpayer subsidies almost the full cost of the so-called research whaling that continues to be done. Unlike the coastal whaling that is truly traditional in Japan and goes back hundreds of years, the minke and fin whales caught in the Southern Ocean (Antartica) is done in a very non-traditional way…using factory ships and harpoon cannons mounted on the bows. Some of the whales caught, such as the fin whale, are on CITES endangered species list of animals that are banned for hunting and commerce.
Way does Japan continue to send ships half-way around the world to slaughter whales? The article provides interesting insight into this question. Politicians representing local areas in Japan that are still involved in whaling, such as Ishinomaki and Taiji, try to protect their local industries in order to get votes. In addition, there are government bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries whose job it is to promote whaling and make research and expedition plans. They do not want to lose their budget or personnel. So, whaling is continuing not mainly for patriotic or cultural reasons, but for political and boring bureaucratic ones.
For homework, I asked you and your partner to come up with 30 questions about your controversial issue. Here are some questions that I came up with about my issue:
Do some communities in the world need to do whaling in order to survive?
If countries such as the US and Portugal have abandoned whaling, despite having done it for hundreds of years, why has Japan found it so difficult to stop whaling?
Historically, which countries in the world have engaged in whaling?
Have whales always been caught as a food source or for other reasons?
Is whale meat fit for human consumption or is it contaminated with mercury, as some scientists claim?
Does the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries really believe that it's necessary to kill whales in order to know how many of them there are?
What is the International Whaling Commission and what is its function?
How many kinds of whales are there in the world? Which ones are threatened or endanger of extinction?
Is the claim of the Japanese government that whales are partly responsible for the falling catches of fish (because the whales are eating them) justified?
Is killing whales for food the same as killing cows for food?
Is it economically profitable to catch whales?
How much damage to Japan's image, and to the economy, has its whaling program caused?
What sort of PR has the Japanese government (esp. the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries) done to justify their insistence to continue whaling?
Australia is especially adamant that Japan stop its "research whaling" in the southern ocean. Why is that?
What sort of actions have environmental (or animal rights) groups taken against countries that still engage in whaling?
Are extreme actions, such as those by the group Sea Shepherd against Japanese whaling vessels, ever justified?
Is it hypocritical to eat meat but object to the slaughter (harvesting?) of whales?
Which whale species have become extinct and did commercial whaling cause their extinction?
You may have heard that at the end of March the International Court of Justice demanded that Japan stop its so-called "research whaling" since the court determined that the killing of whales by Japan was not being done for any sort of sound scientific reasons, but was really just commercial whaling in disguise. The Australian government, with the backing of New Zealand brought the case to the International Court. They consider it a big victory.
The Japanese government had said they would abide by the ruling and they did; their whaling ships in the Southern Ocean made their way back to Japan. However, CNN reported late last month that Japan ships would resume "research whaling" in the Northwest Pacific. Even though this is a much smaller whaling program, they are still doing what the international Court of Justice ruled against.
I was astonished to read on CNN's website that the Asahi Shimbun took a poll and found that 60% of people they questioned believed that "research whaling should continue." Only 23% said the whale hunt shouldn't be carried on anymore. Do so many Japanese really believe that the research whaling is legitimate? Even when the International Court found that it had no basis in science. I'm confused by this. I would like to see the kinds of questions the Asahi Shimbun asked its readers. I suspect that the questions were worded in a biased way.
I embedded this video of a battle between a giant squid and a sperm whale here to illustrate a point. We've been talking about critical thinking in our last few classes. The concept that I tried to explain to everyone last week was "abduction." This describes what happens when we observe something (like what's happening in the video that I embedded here), and then make a logical inference based on that observation. Watch the video and then continue reading.
When you watched the video, you might have made some logical inferences such as…
1) Sperm whales fight against giant squids that are almost the same size.
2) Since the whale won, it's indicates that the whales usually comes out ahead in these battles.
3)Whales can be injured badly by giant squids.
From my research, it seems that sperm whales usually don't pick on giant squids that are fully grown; they try to eat juveniles that are much smaller than them. So, the first inference wouldn't hold up. However, the other two inferences would probably hold up to further evidence. So, this shows that abduction sometimes leads us to logical inferences that are true, but it can't always be trusted.
The following are profiles of people who have unique perspectives on the whaling issue. Some of the people are fictional and others, such as Dora Arey, are real people whose account has been creatively constructed. In the case of Dora Arey, I have written in her voice, and therefore her perspective, as the wife of a captain of a whaling boat. I used factual information from this article:
My name is Dora Arey. My husband and I are eskimos living in Barrow, Alaska. The day before yesterday I had some very good news. I found out that my husband, who is the captain of one of our local Eskimo whaling teams, caught the first whale of the season for us. That's important because we live in a cold, harsh environment and whale meat is an important part of our diet. We'd have trouble surviving without it.
You may imagine that whaling boats are huge ships, and the "whalers" shoot gigantic harpoons at the whales using canons. That's very different from the way we catch whales. The techniques we use are the same ones that our ancestors used thousands of years ago. Small crews set out in tiny seal-skin boats when they see whales come close to shore. The whales are harpooned by hand by strong men at close range. It's dangerous work, especially when the whales get angry. We are only given a certain number of "strikes" by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. If a whale gets away or we miss hitting it, that's counted as a strike.
When I heard that my husband's crew caught a whale, I said, "Thank you, Lord! We receive it. We receive the blessing." We hold a big celebration to commemorate the first whale of the season. The whale will feed our whole community for a long time. We use every part of it. We consider whales to be our brothers. We can't live without each other.
If you take a look at the whale hunt on the following YouTube video, you'll get an idea of how our whale hunt looks.
