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