Fishery or abomination?

[Paul Ward]

Like KK said, my initial post was not to take sides, but to create a discussion. In particular I hoped for someone who was undecided or at least not gung-ho for save-the-whales to put forward an argument.

For instance, the Japanese have always used whales in the most efficient manner of any whaling nation. When the British, Norwegians and Russians were boiling them up for pet food, cattle food and even fertiliser, the Japenese were using whale meat as people food and really did and presumeably still do get the most out of each carcass. For much of the time of old whaling days up to the early 1970's as far as I'm aware, whaling was a pretty important basic requirement to feed the population.

Now however things have changed considerably, but I'm unclear about why the Japanese want to resume whaling. The idea of tradition seems so much stronger an argument, but it seems odd in that the skills of the whalers must be so much rarer after many years when whaling ceased or continued at a much reduced rate.

When I first put up some whaling pages on CoolAntarctica.com a few years ago, I emailed the Japanese Whaling Association

http://www.whaling.jp/english/index.html

asking to be pointed in the direction of their published research, despite asking a couple of times I recieved no reply.

To lay my cards on the table, of course whaling should not continue, but I do have a curiosity as to exactly why it does and why some countries want it to resume.