Killing dolphins over krill... or something?

Whaling is outdated, it's outmoded, it's for products that nobody needs.

The Japanese Whaling industry is in massive debt and only kept alive by 'loans' from every day Japanese tax payers.

Japans whale watching industry, while still working out its kinks is at least still making money rather than costing millions.


The only science the Japanese butchers on the Maru have learnt is how to turn a loved whale into boxes of cubed meat. Butchers are not scientists and extremist poachers who violate international wildlife charters in the name of norm defiance and racist cultural projection, deserve to be treated as criminals.

The age data can be gathered using genetic testing, a practise that real scientists are perfecting



We have data that says over 80% of the Antarctic krill population has died off. 80% of the whales food is gone and we not only hear nothing about it BUT it is then used by the Japanese as a 'reason' to justify killing more Minke!! Not as a reason to stop or shrink the krill harvest, but rather a chance to try and expand.

This is about Japan throwing around her ego, creating diversions to prevent investigation of her fisheries practises and the result is the loss of one of the planets most impressive life forms.

Are the Japanese fated to be whalers for all eternity? Is it written in the stars?


Everyone forgets the reality

And its one hell of a messed up reality.

There is nothing in the scientific writeup that says the end results of research whaling should be eaten. It just says utilised. I take that to mean shared with other scientists of the world.

What if all medical experiment waste had to be donated to nations in famine conditions? I mean Japan is not in a food crisis like she was after WWII and it was either whales die or people die. These days whales are being killed to be brought out as finger food at posh parties.

If whales do have to die for emergency food because there is seriously no alternative food then I think the whale meat should goto people actually fending off starvation.

If whales are so sustainable, why are whales so rare around Japan?

An entire whale is killed for its teste/ovary, ear wax and stomach parts.

A protected animal in a wildlife sanctuary has to die for a few grams of lab material. In most cases a pregnant female, struggling to rebuild the species is killed.

After the animal is sampled (killed), analyzed (cut into bits) and then the byproducts processed (cubes of whale meat packed into boxes and ready to ship to supermarkets) you have a tiny tiny little pile of research material and a massive factory ship loaded with whale meat.

Its a disgrace.
1 whale should last every whale scientist on the planet 1 year at the minimum. That science is abused so openly makes me rather angry

The eternal con of the whaling game has taken on a new twist in Japan lately. We heard about it yesterday (5/25) in a press conference held by that renegade (almost) banned NGO, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and the Swiss Coalition for the Protection of Whales.

WDCS agents in Japan have been busy buying meat products sold in stores under various labels, the most common being "kujira" (whale). DNA tests were conducted to identify the species. Samples were also sent to reputable Japanese laboratories for toxicology analyses.

The work turned out to be a shocking follow up to earlier DNA studies (sponsored by Earthtrust and IFAW) that exposed the sale of meat from endangered whale species. We now know that not only are large quantities of "whale" meat still being sold fraudulently in Japan, but that it is dangerous to the health of those who eat it.

Think about the survey numbers for a moment. More than 2,000 tons of meat from more than 20,000 dolphins, porpoises and small whales are consumed by Japanese people each year. A full 25 percent of the small cetacean meat identified in the survey was mislabeled ... i.e. what purported to be whale meat was often really dolphin. That wasn't too surprising, because we already knew it was going on, but here's the kicker: More than 95 percent of the samples contained levels of contaminants (DDT, dieldrin, mercury) that exceeded U.N. safety standards for human consumption. One sample from a striped dolphin sold as "pilot whale" had a mercury level more than 200 times that considered safe for humans.

Just terrible news. We only have one ocean and we all share it. Mercury is a big problem for us all.

Over the past few months BlueVoice.org has conducted hair sample tests on dolphin eaters in Taiji, Japan. The results showed massive mercury contamination in those who eat dolphin meat. Dolphin eaters shown these results have stopped eating dolphin and the word is finally out that dolphin meat is a major threat to the health of the people of Taiji. The results of the mercury tests on dolphin eaters was picked up by a major Japanese news magazine. The publication has stunned the people of Taiji and indeed all of Japan and indicates a huge scandal in the food safety area. People are now learning the hazard of eating dolphin meat and we expect demand for it to plummet - a major step in ending the dolphin killing.

Infact considering past quota has frequently topped 40,000 is a nice surprise to see the 2008 official quota is 20,108. I doubt the whalers will manage to keep it, and it is still 20,000 more dead cetaceans to add to the other piles of dead created by Japanese whalers, and the hundreds of thousands figures produced as bycatch from Japans other fisheries.



Dolphin Trade

No international treaties cover this slaughter other than CITES, which lists some dolphins and porpoises on Appendix I, banning trade, and the rest on Appendix II, which regulates it. The fisheries may be endangering numerous species and eliminating local populations. Japanese fishermen are killing Dall's Porpoises (Phocoenoides dalli) in large numbers. These porpoises are known to "bow-ride" in the wake of their small dories. Taking advantage of this apparent dolphin game, fishermen are harpooning the frolicking dolphins in their backs with steel-barbed weapons, causing a painful and slow death. The meat is then marketed as "whale." At least 560 boats are killing these small black-and-white porpoises off the Japanese coast (Currey 1990). Approximately 111,500 of these porpoises were killed by Japan from 1986 to 1989 (Nowak 1999). In 1990, the IWC passed a Resolution calling for a reduction in the number of Dall's Porpoises killed to at least 10,000, but Japan killed 17,634 the following year (Chan et al. 1995a). The Japanese continue this killing, using 80 fishing boats that pursue migrating herds throughout the year. An estimated 67 percent of Dall's Porpoises have been killed by the Japanese, who killed 65,159 of these porpoises between 1990 and 1993 (Chan et al. 1995a). Annual kill is now about 20,000 and seems to involve mainly immature animals (Nowak 1999). The 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists this species as Conservation Dependent, in spite of the fact that there seems to be little conservation preserving this species.

Striped Dolphins (Stenella coeruleoalba) have been nearly eliminated along the Japanese coast (Currey 1990). Recent statistics from the IWC show that Japan whales 18 species of small cetaceans, and kills many thousands more as incidental catch in its fisheries (Chan et al. 1995a). The 76,295 of these dolphins killed directly make up only a portion of their human-caused mortality; added to this, 35,002 Striped Dolphins drowned in fishing nets, for a total of 111,297 killed between 1990 and 1993 (Chan et al. 1995a). The combined killing from these two causes is resulting in declines. It, too, is listed as Conservation Dependent by the 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Japan has no special right to decide international waters are part of some Mega-Japanese-Oceanic-Empire and therefor something they have a right to 'modify'.

It is irresponsible fisheries that are responsible for the fish stocks crisis, not whales or dolphins. I mean are the Japanese going to start killing penguins because they eat fish? How about seagulls and puffins? And if your only going to kill a few is that not going to have ANY effect in the big picture? Or should the Japanese be able to kill off 99% of the remaining whales in the hope it will create a 'surplus yield' despite the fact when great whales were hunted to commercial extinction it resulted in an 80% decline in krill population and since that time fisheries has reduced large fish by 90%?

"Dr Pauly said Japanese fisheries negotiators were beginning to argue for the culling of whales to save fisheries, claiming they were seeking an "ecosystem balance". But he said there was little real overlap between the food that whales ate and human fisheries."
"What whales consume is largely stuff that we do not catch in areas where we do not fish," Dr. Pauly said.


As part of the rationale for the "scientific whaling" program, Japanese whalers claim that the rapid growth of the humpback population has meant a "shift in dominance" among Antarctic whales. It says that the humpbacks have begun to push minke whales into poorer feeding grounds.

However Dr Pauly, the director of the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre, said no such problem existed.

"These whales compete within complex food webs, and not directly with each other," he said.

Who says the fish will come back after they are devastated? Who says the whales will?