Whaling is History

An idea I came up with for an NGO/ NPO in Japan related to saving whales from annual "harvests," is one that would conduct campaigns that show whaling as a proud part of Japanese HISTORY. It's possible to honor one's history and culture but acknowledge that times have changed and old-fashioned practices (such as whaling) need not continue. I got this idea when I borrowed a CD from Prof. Pounds which features whaling and sailing songs, sung by a wonderful folk singer named Paul Clayton, whose ancestors engaged in whaling themselves. Some of the whaling/ sailing songs that he sings, he learned from his grandfather, and others he discovered in the logs from 19th century whaling ships. He found these ships' logs at a whaling museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts on the East Coast of the U.S. This town was famous as the starting and ending point of whaling expeditions. Even the author Herman Melville, the writer of Moby Dick, set out on some of his whaling journeys from there. And, surprisingly, a log from a whaling ship based in New Bedford lists a "Joseph Dias," perhaps a relative of mine from Portugal, as being the 2nd mate of a ship called "Sun." That information was made available by the New Bedford Public Library.

Here's the CD cover of the whaling/ sailing songs on the CD that I mentioned above. It's very soothing music. It seems that singing was an important part of the life and work of men who labored on whaling ships. Crew members who were good singers became popular onboard the ship and they were appreciated by the captain and officers.

So my plan is to create an NGO in Japan that would honor Japanese whaling traditions but make it clear that it is a practice that belongs IN THE PAST. It isn't suited to the modern world because it is not sustainable and there has been a long-time (since 1986) moratorium on whaling by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). 

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.

Answering another one of my research questions

I was able to find an article that was published last week in the online version of the UK newspaper, The Guardian, which answered another one of my research questions:

Besides whaling, in what other ways are whales threatened?

The article discussed possible causes of the recent stranding of whales, particularly pilot whales. These whales, like most whale species, are highly social and travel around in "pods." When one individual is sick and is too weak to swim anymore, it sometimes goes toward a beach and becomes stranded. Its fellow pod members will often follow the ill whale and die together with the leader.

It is speculated in the article that seismic surveys which are done for oil exploration, that use sonar (high frequency waves), might be to blame for some of the strandings. Confusion caused by changes in the earth's electromagnetic field before serious earthquakes might also cause some whales to get disoriented and head toward beaches.

So, there are many threats to whales besides whaling and the collisions that they sometimes make with ships, which I wrote about in a previous blog entry. Therefore, it's difficult to talk about "safe levels" of "harvesting" of whales by whaling nations. Whaling isn't the only thing that decreases their numbers and makes them vulnerable.

Hoare, P. "Are humans to blame for mass whale strandings?." Guardian 20 May 2011: Web. 26 May 2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/20/humans-to-blame-whale-strandings>.

UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme. (n.d.). Retrieved June 30, 2018, from http://ukstrandings.org/ 

Introducing the yahoogroup: The Australian Cetacean Network

I found an excellent yahoogroup that deals indirectly with the whaling issue. It's an Australian-based group called "The Australian Cetacean Network." It mostly seems to be made up of scientists who do research on marine mammals, and cetaceans in particular. There are about 200 members in the group and it was founded in August 2002. It's quite an active group, with 1147 messages having been posted since its establishment. Membership in the group is subject to the approval of a site administrator. My membership is now awaiting approval, but, in the meantime, I'm able to view messages that have been posted. I looked through the messages which were posted over the last few months and I found that they could be categorized as follows:

• announcements of sightings of particular types of whales
• requests for volunteers to participate in cetacean research projects
• information about educational opportunities in cetacean research
• reports of the strandings or deaths of whales or dolphins
• announcements of the publication of journals related to marine mammals
• expression of opinions about some controversial issues, such as Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean

This mailing list gives us information that cannot be found easily in newspaper articles or general websites that concern whaling because the members are professionals who are exchanging timely information related to their area of specialty. I worry a bit that countries that still engage in whaling--such as Japan, Iceland, and Norway--will use the information posted on the list to help them hunt for whales.

Seeking answers to research questions

Among the list of questions I posted about whaling on May 7th were the following two:

* 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 whale meat fit for human consumption or is it contaminated with mercury, as some scientists claim?

I was able to find answers that I felt were trustworthy in a UK government publication, which I downloaded as a PDF from the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' (Defra) archive. Although there's always a chance that they may be biased, government documents can be an excellent source for statistics and other detailed objective information.

Whales Policy team (Defra), United Kingdom. Questions and answers on whales and whaling. 2010. Web. 19 May 2011. <http://tinyurl.com/3cujmks>.

Humpback whales (yeimaya's photostream)

According to the document, the argument that whales eat too many fish and, therefore, should be killed in order to save fish stocks, is too simplistic. For one thing, the authors of the document point out that not all of the fish eaten by whales are caught commercially and consumed by humans. In addition, some of the fish that whales eat are predators of commercially targeted fish. Therefore, the whales may be helping fishermen by eating fish that eat another kind of fish which the fishermen are trying to catch. The ecosystem, which man is a part of, is very complicated, so it's inappropriate to conclude that whales hurt fishermen by competing with them, simply because the whales eat fish. This is one of the leading arguments that Japan and Iceland use in order to continue their whaling operations.

As for the question as to whether whale meat is safe for human consumption, the UK government document claims that it contains not only methylmercury, but also PCBs and DDT, chemicals that are known to cause nerve damage and cancer. In fact, the article claims that "Iceland's Directorate of Health [has] advised pregnant and nursing women to reduce, or stop eating whale meat because of high levels of contaminants" (pp. 4-5). The Minke whales caught in the North Atlantic have such high levels of PCBs that it would be illegal to import them into Japan due to food safety laws. Japan claims, through their The Institute of Cetacean Research (I.C.R.), that the Minke whales caught in the Southern Ocean are much less contaminated and safe for humans to eat.

Some good and bad features of the ICR website

A site I selected as a relatively poor website is that of The Institute of Cetacean Research (I.C.R.). It is the official site of an organization that was set up by Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in 1987, the year after a worldwide moratorium (which means a complete stop) on commercial whaling was initiated by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), whose members worried that the stocks of whales were falling to dangerously low levels and they needed time to recover.

Instead of accepting IWC's decision, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries tried to find a way to continue hunting whales. They came up with the idea of using "research" as a guise to continue killing whales, which ended up in fish markets, supermarkets, and restaurants. On the surface, the The Institute of Cetacean Research looks like an innocent scientific endeavor to find out more about our friends the whales. But, scientists who advise the IWC have claimed that it is not at all necessary to kill whales in order to obtain useful data about their numbers, reproductive ability, and what they eat. Therefore, I felt that information on the website was more of an advertisement, or promotional material, rather than balanced and scientific.

Actually, I found out a lot of interesting things about whales from looking through the brochures and information pages at The Institute of Cetacean Research (I.C.R.) website. I learned that the history of whaling goes back to prehistoric times in Japan and the first use of whales for food was when they washed up on beaches. It wasn't until the 17th century that whaling with harpoons in a systematic way became common in some seaside communities in Japan. However, the commercial whaling done today in huge "factory ships," MANY times bigger than the whales themselves, has nothing in common with the small scale whaling that was done long ago, and still continues in some small villages, such as Taiji in Wakayama Prefecture.

Illustration of the Nisshin Maru from Wiki Creative Commons.

The aspects of the I.C.R. website which I thought were poor included...

1. the fact that it's text heavy, with little visual support
2. one-sided; without acknowledging the views of its critics
3. difficulty of navigating the site and finding information efficiently
4. the news page is not very up-to-date; esp. compared the site of Greenpeace and other groups which oppose whaling

On the other hand, the site presents some user-friendly features, which include...

1. a helpful Q & A page
2. links to pamphlets, which are well illustrated and in PDF format
3. contact information so that individuals, or the media, can found out more information or get answers to unanswered questions

Whaling from various perspectives -- A taxpayer's point of view

[The following account is fictional, but it is based on a collage of factual information.]

My name is Taro Watanabe and I'm a businessman living in Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture and working in Tokyo. I pay a lot in taxes and they just seem to go up every year. I understand the need for paying taxes since the money is used to maintain roads, provide the salaries of public school teachers, and make parks pleasant places to rest. But, recently I heard that my taxes subsidize the whaling industry here in Japan. The whaling industry needs help from the Japanese government just to break even. For example, in the 2008-09 season, I read that the Japanese whaling industry required US$12 million of taxpayer money. You can read about it yourself in the following article:

World Wildlife Fund. "Norway, Japan Prop Up Whaling Industry With Taxpayer Money, Report Finds." ScienceDaily, 18 Jun. 2009. Web. 6 May 2011.

Even with all that extra money, the whaling industry couldn't make a profit. Besides that, the Japanese government had to pay a lot of money for public relations to compensate for the bad image that the whaling industry was giving Japan. This especially makes me upset since I've never eaten whale meat. I don't want to eat it since I know that it contains very high levels of mercury. As far back as 2003, the Scientific American, a respected science journal in the States, reported that ALL of the samples of whale and dolphin meat that they tested exceeded the Japanese guidelines for mercury levels, making it especially dangerous for pregnant women to eat. So, this means that I pay higher taxes so that the Japanese government can give my money to the whaling industry, which catches whales whose poisonous meat appears in supermarkets, harming the health of Japanese people. Does this make sense?

A few years ago, I went whale watching off Dana Point in California. You can get an idea of what I experienced by watching this YouTube video:



It was a fantastic experience. I was able to really get to respect and admire whales by seeing them up close. They're such majestic creatures. California and Hawaii have whale watching industries that bring in a lot of money, without the need for tax subsidies. So, wouldn't it be better for Japan to give up whaling and take up whale WATCHING instead? I can imagine whale-watching excursions from Fujisawa or Enoshima, near my hometown. The following story shows how whale watching could bring Japan more profit than whaling:

"Whale watching in Japan more profitable than whaling: report." Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion 29 June 2010: Web. 5 May 2011. .