takasito

Wanna be terrorist bomber arrested.

2009-03-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

A FISHERMAN faked a bomb threat against an anti-whaling ship after falling out with some of the crew, a court has heard.
Victorian skipper Kenneth James Archer has admitted phoning Hobart police on March 2 and stating there was a bomb on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's boat Steve Irwin.

The ship was docked in Hobart after spending the summer chasing Japanese whaling vessels.

The Supreme Court in Hobart heard that Archer, 50, of Lakes Entrance, made the call while he was drinking with a "fairly panoramic view of the dock and the Steve Irwin".

"Your only motivation appears to be that you had a difference of opinion with members of the crew of the boat the day before," Justice Shan Tennent said.

The ship was evacuated while police and emergency services attended.

source

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is satisfied that the sentencing will put an end to the accusations and claims of some critics who have posted on the Internet that Sea Shepherd fabricated the "bomb threat hoax" as a publicity stunt.

source

IWPO member D. Teal had this to say.

"lol
what a loser"

Which we can bring to you as a blog exclusive!
:)

The false choice.

2009-03-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

The recent attempts by Japan to change the IWC were put into words by the WDCS quite well.

At this week’s intersessional meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Rome, a proposal which would lift the ban by granting Japan legal commercial whaling quotas in its coastal waters is to be discussed. In return Japan would voluntarily reduce its controversial scientific whaling in Antarctica.

Now, a new report, ‘Small Type Whaling, A false choice for the IWC’, reveals that the longstanding case Japan has put forward to the IWC for these quotas is inaccurate and flawed.

WDCS’s Sue Fisher said ‘The reality is that Japan does not need coastal whaling and it is attempting to blackmail the IWC into doing its bidding. The real danger of the deal being considered is it implies that coastal whaling is the lesser of two evils.
“However, if adopted, it would lift the ban on commercial whaling and open the floodgates for other countries to restart or expand their own whaling. The IWC is being given a false choice.”

The IWC paradox!

2009-03-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

Japan will fight to the end to protect Article 8 'scientific whaling'.
As a move of self preservation though the IWC needs to get rid of it.
While it exists the IWC does not matter. Nobody gives a dam about the IWC anyway. They can't touch you and they can't touch me.
And yet they are seen as the authority on whaling!

There is only one power in the IWC and that is the 75% majority in votes.
This has worked well for Japan. They buy the elephant ivory gathered by African poachers, and African nations vote to allow Japanese poachers to kill whales.

One hand washes the other and the trade in protected animal products has a lot of hands.
We have seen that William Hogarth may be little more than another shady Eugene Lapointe character. Only instead of sending 100,000 elephants to their deaths to feed the Japanese market William instead plans to send thousands of whale corpses.

William Hogarths blunder....

2009-03-12T00:13:00.000-07:00

In what is the most obvious result of the fools deal, Korea has now said it would like to resume whaling if Japan is given the go ahead to expand its Northern Pacific kill operations. (1) (2) Word is he has also awaken the slumbering Russian whaling industry.

I doubt this is what Obama had in mind.
I doubt this is what Japanese tax payers had in mind for their hard earned funds either.
Life is not fair, but it is a shame that the obselete cruelty of whaling lives on still. There is no longer an urgent need for any whale product. The cost is too high.

The Cove has landed

2009-03-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

The film has now been acquired by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions for distribution in the United States. The U.K.-based the Works Intl., in conjunction with James Atherton's Quickfire Films Fund, has acquired all other territories. In addition, Participant Media has signed on to perform outreach for "The Cove," working with nonprofits and community groups.

The film is an Oceanic Preservation Society presentation of a Jim Clark production, in association with Diamond Docs and SkyFish Films. The film is produced by Paula DuPre Pesmen and Fisher Stevens and executive produced by Jim Clark.

Link to Review in Variety Magazine

This is an important film and one a long time coming. Here at takasito theres a lot of interest building on what is a serious mile stone in dolphin protection. News as it comes!

They invested some big bucks and covertly planted cameras on the beaches, in the air, underwater and in the hills to capture every horrific detail of one of the cruelest and most monstrous massacres of wildlife on the planet.

The result is "The Cove," one of the most extraordinary wildlife crime films ever produced. This film documents and exposes the Taiji dolphin slaughter dramatically, effectively, covertly, and magnificently.

When anti-SSCS thugs attack!

2009-03-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

A recent blogging attack by the disturbed anti-Sea Shepherd thug 'shark diva' certainly went out of its way to attack a very fine lady. Knowing her myself I contacted her about the attacks, and was informed she was blocked from the very website attacking her!

Being a believer in freedom of the press and of Justice in Australia, I have offered to host her reply here.

The story has been pulled, and another with the correct information relayed will be done.
I believed i was talking to an exec producer to org Gemma Pitcher to do interviews for crew on the island, as Ive mentioned previously, I dont do interviews, I set them up for crew. I have done this many times before. The 'story' referred to is a garbled mess of information re the pilot whale stranding in Tas, a write up on the SSCS site and simple 'reinterpretation' by media. At no point did I say the Steve Irwin was at the sperm whale stranding or that there were marine bios and the like onboard. Thats just silly. The where abouts of the Steve Irwin is widely known as it is monitored closely by the media, and there is a film crew onboard.I did discuss the story referred to on the SSCS site briefly and org for HO to be contacted regarding further material (at this point no further info has been sent). I have nothing to gain by telling untruths re who I am (I dont think the position referred to in the 'story' even exists within SSCS) or where the ship was (tho i have little doubt you ll make up some reasons for me) and niether does SSCS, the comments regarding funding are silly also, how would any of these comments create funding. Guys, say what you like about me with the nasty comments and slanderous implications, but dont debate where the Steve Irwin was or whether that was said. Pretty much everyone knows where the vessel was, as it is closely monitored by the media and has a film crew onboard. It appears looking at previous bloggs of yours that this isnt the first time you ve written negative and slanderous words regarding SSCS and you re entitled to your opinions, even if they are based on misinformation.
Mistakes happen in the media, its not the first time and unfortunately it probably wont be the last.
Regards
Ness

Sharkdiver, you are a coward, a lier and a disgrace.
Your devotion to the Japanese Fisheries Agency is sickening and your 'green-washed' blog is a joke.

Australians in the dark!

2009-03-04T05:19:00.000-08:00

Government in the dark on Japanese whaling
Media Release | Spokesperson Rachel Siewert
Tuesday 24th February 2009, 10:47pm

The Federal Government has no idea what whaling operations may have occurred in our own Antarctic waters, say the Australian Greens.

"Questioning in Senate Estimates tonight has revealed that the Australian Government does not know if any whaling occurred in our waters during the current whaling season," said Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert.

"During estimates it was confirmed that the Government had not followed up reports from the Sea Shepherd that they had found at least part of the Japanese fleet in Australian waters."

"So, we don't know how long the fleet was in our waters, if whales were taken and if so how many. In addition, it seems that the Government doesn't even want to ask the Japanese about it," said Senator Siewert.

"The Government doesn't know what is happening because they failed to monitor these operations. One of the reasons given for not monitoring was because the Japanese were not supposed to be in Australian waters this season."

"It is incredible to believe that the Government can't confirm the Japanese were in our waters, if they took any whales or any other information about their operations," she concluded.

source

Bob Brown your a bloody legend mate!
Keep it up, you are showing the world what an Aussie can do!

Suspect Arrested for Threatening to Bomb the Steve Irwin

2009-03-04T03:45:00.000-08:00

04-03-2009 03:23:PM

Suspect Arrested for Threatening to Bomb the Steve Irwin

The Tasmanian police have arrested a suspect who allegedly called police to say he had planted a bomb on the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin in Hobart harbor. The suspect called in the bomb threat from his own Victoria registered cell phone from Hobart. The police traced the call and identified the owner of the cell phone.

Police showed ships manager Benjamin Baldwin a photograph of the suspect and Ben recognized him as a person he refused to allow on the ship a few hours before the threat was made. Ben reported that the man had been bragging about being in Auckland when Greenpeaces ship the Rainbow Warrior was bombed. Ben thought he was acting strange and told him that he was not welcome to board the ship.

The name of the suspect has not yet been released.

There were only five crewmembers on the ship at the time the threat was made. Five other crewmembers were on King Island assisting with the rescue of stranded pilot whales and a few others were ashore in Hobart.

source

Let this be a warning to all terrorists. You will find no welcome in Australia.
We don't swing that way!

Bomb Threat on the Steve Irwin!

2009-03-03T14:42:00.000-08:00

04-03-2009 04:29:AM

Bomb Threat on the Steve Irwin

Report from 2nd Officer Pedro Montiero

At around 11:15pm (Monday, March 2) Tasmanian Police came to the Steve Irwin gangplank and asked the gangplank watch Julie to get the highest ranking officer on board. They stood at the gangplank and reported to me that "someone called in a bomb threat about 20 minutes ago, stating that it would detonate in 30 minutes. You therefore have 10 minutes left." I immediately went to the bridge, rang the abandon ship alarm, than announced the bomb threat on the speaker system. There were five people on board besides me.

Five crewmembers were onboard, some crew were ashore and five others were on King Island rescuing stranded pilot whales.

In total, four police cars showed up. The police believe they have a suspect. They were able to trace the call, so they know where it was made, and where the phone is registered. After waiting past the bomb detonation time Ben and I searched the ship for any suspicious objects, then brought the rest of the crew onboard for a more thorough search. No bombs have been discovered.

The Tasmanian Police were very helpful in this matter and seem to think they have a good chance of finding the person responsible.

Source.

Sounds as if the Australian police will be happy to target actual criminals, as opposed to doing the Japanese Fisheries Agencies dirty work. Nice to see.

Leave the Minke alone!

2009-02-26T23:41:00.001-08:00

1) The whaling debate is about killing animals that are either endangered (as in the case of Fin whales or J-stock Minke) or likely in a dramatic and mysterious decline (as in the case of Minke whales) OR important to other nations whale watching industries (such as Humpbacks and Right whales).

2) Some whales such as Blue whales and Right whales were hunted almost to extinction and are slowly recovering in population. Other whales such as Southern Minke have maintained a steady high population of around a million for around the last million years, yet have fallen to around 300,000 since the 1980's! Clearly an animals 'endangered' status must be measured both in past and future threats as both are very different issues.

3) As recently shown culling whales will not help fisheries. Whales are not eating all the fish, humans are eating all the fish. The oceans health is important to all mankind and it is irresponsible for one nation to put it at such great risk.

4) Japanese whalers usually kill % wise mostly pregnant female whales, which in recovering populations puts the genetic diversity of the species at risk. Japans research has been a very low standard & its closed doors secresy and reliance on lethal sampling ilogical.

5) The decline of Minke may be related to many different issues. Some that have been suggested are high infant mortality due to Crassicaudosis parasites, low fertility due to Brucellosis Bacteria infections in genitals, sunburn, eating plastic, ship strikes, bycatch, noise polution, ghost nets and the die off of around 80% of the krill that Minke eat. With these very real problems, and future potential ones as Antarctica melts the future of the Minke is uncertain at best. While the main cause of the decline is a mystery, it is folly to encourage whaling in any form.

+

Yea I know wheres the spell check.
Now I can back up every sentence there with a source and happy to do so.
But really I am more interested in why other people think its important to stick up for the Minke. The obvious reason really is that they are a very likable animal, as anyone who has dived with them on the GBR will attest.

Whale eating culture.

2009-02-26T13:59:00.000-08:00

Due to media self-censorship and indifference among the Japanese public on the issue, a "whalers' sanctuary" has been created inside Japanese society.

It protects a small number of bureaucrats, whalers and politicians so they can enjoy vested interests in whaling and keep their nationalistic stance. All at the expense of Japanese taxpayers.~ source

From what I have read the Japanese only had a mainstream practise of eating whales for about 15 years following the end of WWII.

I will try find some stats for that, but for almost all of Japans whaling history, whale meat was only consumed in a few isolated areas.

Whale consumption had dropped by a lot before the 1986 ban on commercial whaling, as alternative meats became available on the market. Whale was seen as a boring food, that was important previously because it had been available and cheap! Many Japanese people were happy to have had a full belly thanks to Japans whaling at a time when many were going hungry!

But times have changed now. The whales killed by Japan are killed to provide an elite few and their pets with a luxury dish designed to show their power and wealth. The meat is contaminated and often comes from illegal poaching from wildlife sanctuaries.

It has often been said that many people who oppose whaling are hypocritical for eating other animals. But the Japanese eat other animals as well. If they were as contaminated with mercury like cetaceans are perhaps they would not!

That said each citizen of Japan eats yearly on average around 70kg of fish.

"Last year, 5500 tons of whale meat was supplied to the Japanese market. This includes whale meat which does not get eaten and is simply thrown away because it didn't sell. Even if we generously assume all of the meat was in fact eaten, that is only about 46g of whale meat per person , as opposed to 5.6kg of beef, 12.1kg of pork, and 10.5kg of chicken."

Japans secret whaling.

2009-02-26T12:37:00.000-08:00

Japan leads the world with its whaling, being behind the slaughter of HUNDREDS of thousands of cetaceans in the past few decades alone. But while figures are released for Japans pelagic whaling in the Southern Ocean and Northern Pacific, and its coastal whaling and small cetacean hunts.... there is whale meat coming onto the Japanese market from unexplained sources. Some may be unreported bycatch, but others like the 2 mystery fin whales that were discussed at last years IWC meeting remain totally unexplained.

There is an interesting look at in this link which I will leave a few quotes from.

OSU researcher says Japanese whale killings hidden and proves that Japan's statistics on the endangered fin whales it has killed are bogus.

Baker and colleagues started their detective work when they bought whale meat from shops in Japan in 2006 and 2007. Using DNA fingerprinting, they soon discovered that the meat came from morefin whales than Japan has acknowledged killing.

"Clearly there must be an undocumented source of these whales," Baker said, "but we don't know what it is."

Now Fin whales are the second largest animals on Earth, it is said that even the Nisshin Maru struggles to process them. This raises the spectre that Japan may very well have a secret pirate whaling ship operating as the Soviets did in the 1980's.

For those interesting in some of the history behind Japans secret whaling operations I provide these sources.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

Australia can lawfully stop whaling within its Antarctic EEZ.

2009-02-25T21:35:00.000-08:00

While the Australian federal court case last year found that Japanese whaling in Australian waters is illegal there has been no arrests of Japanese whalers who still continue to poach whales from Australian waters despite the ruling. Pressure is begining to mount of the Australian government to take action against the whalers and uphold the law.

Australia has every right to fight the Japanese in court over whaling and still remain diplomatic friends and trading partners.

For those of you who do not know much about the issue, I reccomend checking out the pdf below.

Seminar paper delivered at the Australian National University, Canberra, 6 May 2008,
and the National Environmental Law Association and Monash University, Melbourne, 7 May 2008.

"There is no doubt that Australia is the greatest whale loving nation on Earth," said Swedish 1^st Officer Peter Hammarstedt. "This country rocks."

Police raid Sea Shepherd, take Whale Wars Season II footage as evidence.

2009-02-23T01:45:00.000-08:00

An armed squad seized 157 of Discovery Channel's raw videos, and navigational records from the ship in Hobart. The videos show the Sea Shepherd's clashes with Japanese whalers and may be given to the Japanese Government. A federal agent said yesterday's raid resulted from a formal referral from Japanese authorities and that police were undertaking preliminary inquiries into this summer's Southern Ocean confrontation.

OK so AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty said the allegations against Sea Shepherd relate to endangering the Japanese ship, the Yushin Maru III.

"On the 17th of February the referral [came] from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade," he said.

"But it was, when I say referral, it was simply onforwarding to us the allegations made in Japan by the director-general of the Japanese fishing agency."

So once again the Fisheries Agency flexed and the Foreign Affairs people jumped.
Japans strategy of letting the Fisheries Agency decide the nations foreign policy is surely a huge gamble?

Eighteen months ago the AFP investigated a complaint by Mr Watson against the Japanese authorities. In that case, the federal Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute.

"So in that sense we understand the legislation and the need to treat the legislation seriously and objectively for all parties," Mr Keelty said.

So the official complaint stemmed from the director-general of the Japanese fishing agency. Now the federal attorney-general would need to approve any prosecution arising from the raid on the Steve Irwin in Hobart! Or so says the Aussie Senate anyway. Obviously Animal Planet are not happy about the situation!

The television channel "has a team of lawyers working on it. That footage is extremely valuable to them. We are literally looking at $20 million worth of footage," Capt Watson said.

"I think the Japanese are far more scared of that footage than of us and the concern is, if it is kept as evidence, it will never see the light of day."

Now the Steve Irwin and Japanese whaling ships collided twice in recent months, and the activists have staged hit-an-run attacks on the fleet with rancid butter-filled bottles hurled from motorized runabouts, according to both sides.

The Steve Irwin was met by the AFP when it docked in Hobart on Friday afternoon (AEDT) and officers confiscated the ship's log book and video footage.

The footage taken by wildlife documentary group Animal Planet depicted some of the most dramatic whale-killing scenes ever seen, crew on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship said.

The police, who had search warrants, kept the crew on board as they searched cabins.

Senator Brown has written to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd calling for an immediate explanation as to how the raid could be in the nation's interest.

"On the face of it, this is outrageous behaviour by the Australian government to secure favour from the Japanese authorities," he said.

"And if it wasn't, what on earth is the Australian Federal Police up to?

"It is an extraordinary raid, that defies the imagination."

Senator Brown said he could think of no other explanation for why the ship was raided other than to take footage from respected international media organisations to provide the Japanese with prosecution evidence.

"If this action was taken at the behest of the Japanese authorities it will outrage many Australians.

"The Australian Federal Police can expect detailed questioning from the Greens at Senate Estimates this coming week."

Does all of this remind anyone else of this recent history?

INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE LAW OF THE SEA
Southern Bluefin Tuna (New Zealand v. Japan; Australia v. Japan) 1999

Professor Crawford represented Australia in 1999 in a joint action with New Zealand against Japan over its huge so-called experimental catch of southern bluefin tuna in a case with parallels to the "scientific" whaling program Canberra brands a sham.

Australia gives in to the Japanese bully tactics.

2009-02-21T19:23:00.000-08:00

An armed squad seized 157 of Discovery Channel's raw videos, and navigational records from the ship in Hobart. The videos show the Sea Shepherd's clashes with Japanese whalers and may be given to the Japanese Government. A federal agent said yesterday's raid resulted from a formal referral from Japanese authorities and that police were undertaking preliminary inquiries into this summer's Southern Ocean confrontation.

Greensleader Bob Brown called on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to explain the raid. "On the face of it, this is outrageous behaviour by the Australian Government to secure favour from the Japanese authorities,"he said.

"I'm also told that the Japanese used absolutely outrageous tactics, like sound wave attacks on people in helicopters, which could have brought down those helicopters from the Sea Shepherd."

Senator Brown said he could think of no other explanation for why the ship was raided other than to take footage from respected international media organisations to provide the Japanese with prosecution evidence.

Combined with Japans bribery of IWC members, Peter Garretts back stab of the Sea Shepherd society has once more left the future of whales as bleak indeed.

Obama vs Whalers feb 23rd!

2009-02-19T16:46:00.000-08:00

There is no dislike of Americans here at Takasito, only frustration at their willingness to let the whaling issue stagnate. Its not that the Americans have not done more than their share already for cetacean protection, its more that after doing so much in the past... that to have them doing so little lately is a shock! Without American support New Zealand, Australia and Chile are simply ignored by the Japanese.

As you probably know, the International Whaling Commission is working on a plan to allow Japan to kill more whales.
Who brokered that plan? The American delegate, William Hogarth.
Want to know who appointed Hogarth to the IWC?
George W. Bush.

There may be time for President Obama to send Hogarth home and stop this deal. Please sign the petition.

On the 23rd of Feb Obama will meet with the Japanese Prime Minister. The U.S. position on the issue of whaling has been, and probably still is, more important than the IWC position. It is perhaps a good time to send the man an email advising him to take the oportunity to resolve the whaling issue so that diplomatic ties can be strengthened in this challenging time.

Never forget that Americans have been behind some of the most important whale protection measures, will be a large part of any future solution and have been the most important players in anti-whaling since 1940 when they quit doing it! Let us hope Obama brings ballance to the force. We need the USA to lead the charge on article VIII.

Before last November’s election, Greenpeace USA asked him: “If you are elected President, what concrete steps will you take to convince Japan to stop whaling?”

Obama replied: “As president, I will ensure that the US provides leadership in enforcing international wildlife protection agreements, including strengthening the international moratorium on commercial whaling. Allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable.”

Joji Morishita

2009-02-17T16:45:00.000-08:00

"These men have been painted as heroes," said Joji Morishita, consulate for the Japanese government's powerful Fisheries Agency, which sponsors the whale hunts. "They're not heroes."

source.

So the power tripper Joji Morishita wants to lock the lads Toru Suzuki & Junichi Sato away for a decade to boost the Fisheries Agencies ego. Well they may find Japans image will pay dearly for that choice. Japans sponsorship of illegal whale poaching, & support for the ivory trade is unacceptable in this day and age. Its a disgrace, and history will record Toru and Junichi as hero's.

People to email over Japans illegal whaling.

2009-02-14T20:49:00.000-08:00

Props to Animal Planet for providing such a handy list!

Everyone has an opinion about the issues — and a voice. Want yours to be heard by the right people? Here's how:

Write a letter, send an e-mail or place a phone call to one or more of the following representatives and non-profit organizations. State what's on your mind. If you're expressing an opinion, use facts to back it up. And remember, stay calm and courteous, as this increases your chances of being heard.

(Please note that the following list of contacts is not exhaustive.)

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
* The United States of America is an anti-whaling nation. It stands opposed to a resumption of commercial whaling, but does allow for small-scale aboriginal whaling.

Contact the President
Contact Your Senator
Contact Your Representative

JAPAN
* Japan is a pro-whaling nation currently engaged in a long-term scientific research program to assess the commercial viability of whale stocks.

Contact the Prime Minister of Japan, Yasuo Fukuda

SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY
* Sea Shepherd is an anti-whaling non-profit activist organization that uses non-violent, direct-action tactics to thwart whaling activity.

Contact Sea Shepherd

THE INSTITUTE OF CETACEAN RESEARCH
* The Institute of Cetacean Research is a privately owned, non-profit institution that conducts scientific research on whales. Their legal status is authorized by Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Contact the Institute of Cetacean Research

GREENPEACE
* Greenpeace is a non-profit activist organization, part of whose mission is to document and non-violently interrupt the hunting of whales.

Contact Greenpeace

NORWAY
* Norway is a pro-whaling nation that engages in commercial whaling. Having filed an objection to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) commercial whaling moratorium, it is not bound by it.

Contact the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg

AUSTRALIA
* Australia is an anti-whaling nation committed to whale protection. It has established the Australian Whale Sanctuary to protect all whales and dolphins found in its waters.

Contact the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd

ICELAND
* Iceland is a pro-whaling nation that resumed small-scale commercial whaling in 2006 following five years of research whaling.

Contact Iceland's fisheries minister, Einar Kristinn Gudfinnsson ~ (note e-mail link at bottom)

Japans whale and dolphin quota for 2009.

2009-02-14T20:36:00.000-08:00

If we look at which nations have killed great whales since 1986 when the 0 catch limits were imposed.... you will notice that Japan has killed by far the most each year. Theres no figure for 2009 yet but it is very unlikely to be less than the 2008 in either the Northern Pacific OR the Southern Ocean. There may be a small reduction in the numbers of dolphins killed.

An interesting thing about that link is that it does not name the species that are caught in Japans commercial coastal whaling. Or the other cetaceans killed by Japanese whalers .

As a point of interest it should be noted that there is no upper limit to the number of whales or dolphins Japan can assign itself as a quota.

I will update this post when/if Japan releases any stats.

EDIT ~ actually the IKAN website did link to this pdf file that shows the body count for small cetaceans. No heads up on the 2009 quota though.

Stink bombs are just some rotten butter.

2009-02-14T20:27:00.000-08:00

If the Japanese whalers are so worried about 'chemicals' that smell bad.... why did they get a job cutting open dead whales in the first place?
I know most of you have not been around a dead whale, but even a fresh one don't smell too charming once ya get into the blood and guts of it all.
Ya have to argue whether the stink bombs made the place smell better or worse.... and if the 'acids' inside the whale were more dangerous than the ones inside the stink bombs?

Infact considering the very real risk of catching the ball rotting disease brucella while hacking up whales, theres the chance the stink bombs had an anti-septic effect and actually improved worker safety.

Seriously, fill a bottle with butter and leave it to ferment. You will soon have your fearsome chemical ACID weapon.

The mind boggles at the terms the Japanese would use to describe a thrown chicken egg! Probably something like this.

POSSIBLE BIRD FLU BIO TERROR ATTACK WITH FRAGMENTATION ANTI-PERSONAL WEAPONS!!

Oh of course there would be a link to hydrogen sulfide of some type too. lol

But seriously the stink bombs are just rotten butter, the reason they smell so bad is due to the Butyric Acid content of the rotten butter. Butyric Acid is certainly not the deadly chemical weapon the Japanese make it out to be.

In 2008 we saw the Nisshin Maru claiming injury of two crew from a butyric acid attack.
Paul Watson responded to the claims with

"My crew did not injure anyone," said Captain Watson. "This is just a spin designed to get public sympathy for men who are themselves vicious and ruthless killers of whales."

The Japanese claim that two whalers were injured when six liters of butyric acid were tossed onto the flensing deck of the Nisshin Maru.

According to Japan's Fisheries Agency spokesman, Hideki Moronuki, the two Japanese crewmen sustained injuries from the attack after one was hit by an empty container of acid and the other had acid squirted in his eye.

"Nice try, but a total fabrication," said Captain Watson. "The butyric acid is contained in one-liter glass bottles, all of which broke upon contact with the flensing deck of the Nisshin Maru. These bottles are sealed and the acid released after being broke, so it is impossible to be hit by an empty bottle. Secondly, no one squirted butyric acid into anyone's eye, and even if they did, this is a simple non-toxic butter acid, basically rancid butter. It will not cause eye injury. If we had tossed marshmallows on the deck of the Nisshin Maru, I'm sure the whalers would try to claim they were injured by them"

Whale Wars ~ pilot!

2009-02-14T20:13:00.000-08:00

I'd like to add a blast from the past, the whale wars pilot episodes. Originally shot from both the Sea Shepherd side and Japanese side and then was going to be editted together. Who is guilty about dolphin drive clashes? And why is it always people film ?
Anyway...
I hope everyone is still excited about seeing the new movie The ! Made to give people an up close look at the wonderful Japanese 'Whaling Culture'.

One thing is for sure Whale Wars Season II is going to have some magical scenes in it!
Its just a shame we will not have footage of the Japanese soldiers faces in Indonesia when they were refused entry.

“We asked the Japanese whaling ship to go and it has left. We don’t want to support any illegal fishing,” said Sumarto Suharno, head of the East Java Natural Resources Conservation Office, or KSDA.

Endangered Minke whales.

2009-02-14T20:04:00.000-08:00

You know.... if you say the Southern Minke is endangered, then perhaps you are right. If you say the Southern Minke is not endangered then perhaps you are right.

The point is that we do not know if the population is crashing, stable or increasing. Most of the data seems to point towards a very dramatic decline. Can it be possible that even the worlds most common whale will be extinct in 66 years! The rate of decline suggests it will be.

The situation as it stands is that Southern Minke are Data deficient!

Japanese whalers killing every whale they see is not going to improve this situation either. We need population trend data, not a butchers list of protected animals that have been served up in Japanese diners.

If we look at the authority on endangered animals we find the Minkes future is far from sure.

Here is a picture of Minke population estimates.

Red List Category & Criteria: Data Deficient
The data analyzed by standard methods suggest a reduction of approximately 60% between the 1978–91 period and the 1991–2004 period. However, alternative hypotheses to explain the apparent decline are still under investigation. If the decline is real, its extent and causes are currently unknown, and it may still be continuing. The corresponding population reduction thresholds (criterion A2) are 30% for Vulnerable and 50% for Endangered, measured over a 3-generation time window, which in this case is estimated to be approximately 66 years (22 years per generation). If the decline proves to be largely or mainly an artifact, or proves to have been transient in the light of analyses of more recent data, the species would qualify as Least Concern. If it were real, the species would qualify as Endangered. Pending resolution of the uncertainties relating to the apparent decline, however, the species is listed as Data Deficient (DD).

The IWC discussed this in 2007. The decline was specific to minke whales; estimates for other species (blue, fin, killer, humpback) increased over the period; an explanation for the decline would need to account for this.

I'd like to add that ~ comparing declines caused by harvest followed by recovery from harvest controls to declines from loss of habitat and climate warming are apples and oranges. Whales surviving past threats is different to them surviving the future ones they face.

While genetics has revealed a stable Minke population for the last million years or so, the threats that now face Minke are going to be the largest they have ever faced before. Both of these threats revolve around the krill.

Talley’s claim Japan should be allowed to hunt whales because they were doing it sustainably is sadly misinformed. There is no evidence for the alleged “sustainability” of Japanese whaling. In fact, despite Japan’s insistence that there are plenty of whales given the Southern Hemisphere minke whale population numbers over 760,000 animals, these figures have been discredited by scientists and withdrawn by the International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee. Research has shown that minke numbers are closer to 250,000 – less than a third of those claimed – and the IWC has repeatedly called for Japan to end its hunt. Furthermore, scientific research has shown that the minke whale population is further subdivided into three separate species, and then into local and regional populations with little inter-migration between them. This means even a very small kill could result in localised extinction in a particular area. Japan’s plans to expand its kill to include species classified as endangered and vulnerable makes a mockery of any claims of sustainability.
Past commercial whaling was characterised by a serial depletion of one whale stock after another, and massive illegal and unreported kills of over 90,000 whales which drove many of the larger species to the verge of extinction. Despite over forty years of protection, Southern Hemisphere Blue whales still number as few as 400 animals, and may never recover. As Muller points out, “We have only to consider the lessons of history to see whaling is not sustainable – particularly when “managed” by the industry responsible for exploiting it.”

Source for above quote.

So what about this population explosion of Minke that the Japanese like to claim?

The DNA from minke samples shows such genetic diversity that the Antarctic population must have been extensive for the past 200,000 years, says a Stanford University researcher. That long history challenges the view of some whaling advocates that the 8-meter-long minkes used to be rare in Antarctica but flourished as other whales dwindled. This boom supposedly keeps populations of bigger, competing whales from growing.

The shape of the Antarctic-minke tree indicates "a couple of bumps and troughs", but "no real booms and busts," says Palumbi. For the recent part of its million-year history, the minke whale population has numbered between 500,000 and 1 million. ~ source

So there is no surge in Minke numbers. Rather we have a species that appears to be in VERY rapid decline. They are not roaches or weeds to be pulled. Considering the Japanese practise of killing the pregnant females, combined with the loss of fertility due to brucella infections, and the loss of their krill food source to climate change..... and we have the perfect scenario for the worlds most common whale to be made extinct by Japan.

This is unacceptable, and while we may not be able to clean all the plastic from the ocean, or stop climate change, WE CAN end whaling BEFORE the Southern Minke is pushed to the edge of extinction as the J-stock Minke around Japan already have been!

Illegal Japanese whaling.

2009-02-14T19:42:00.000-08:00

While there are many reasons people consider Japans whaling illegal, there is perhaps no more clear example of it being so than IWC regulation 19(d). Japan breaks this regulation by using a factory ship based kill fleet to take Endangered Fin Whales in the IWC Southern Ocean Whale sactuary. This is different to the Australian whale sanctuary! Sanctuaries where established after the over hunting period before 1986, but Japan has consistantly abused the regulations around them.

Adopted by the International Whaling Commission in 1994, the Southern Ocean Sanctuary provides long-term protection to around three quarters of the world's remaining whales on their feeding grounds.

The sanctuary is designed to allow the natural restoration of an ecosystem devastated by commercial whaling. Some whale populations had been reduced to a tiny fraction of their original numbers by commercial whaling. From an initial population of around 250,000 blue whales only about a thousand now remain.

In 1994, the IWC voted by 23 to 1 to adopt the majority of the Southern Ocean south of 40ºS as a sanctuary in which all commercial whaling is prohibited. Japan was the only country to vote against the Sanctuary and lodged an objection to the extent that it applies to minke whales. The Southern Ocean Sanctuary came into effect on 6th December 1994 for an indefinite period, but was reviewed in July 2004 at the 56th meeting of the International Whaling Commission. Its the continued existence was put to a vote and was the most significant vote for whale conservation taken in the IWC since the morotorium adoption many years previously.

The Japanese are in violation of IWC regulation 19(a). The IWC regulations in the Schedule to the Convention forbid the use of factory ships to process any protected stock: "19. (a) It is forbidden to use a factory ship or a land station for the purpose of treating any whales which are classified as Protection Stocks in paragraph 10. Paragraph 10(c) provides a definition of Protection Stocks and states that Protection Stocks are listed in the Tables of the Schedule. Table 1 lists all the baleen whales, including minke, fin, and humpback whales and states that all of them are Protection Stocks.

In addition, the IWC regulations specifically ban the use of factory ships to process any whales except minke whales: Paragraph 10(d) provides: “(d) Notwithstanding the other provisions of paragraph 10 there shall be a moratorium on the taking, killing or treating of whales, except minke whales, by factory ships or whale catchers attached to factory ships. This moratorium applies to sperm whales, killer whales and baleen whales, except minke whales.” Fin and humpback whales are both baleen whales and are subject to this moratorium.

To get around what is a blatant breach of IWC regulations the Japanese abuse the Permits system. But really...

In the discussion of these permits in the Commission, an additional factor raised is that the catches take place within the Southern Ocean Sanctuary declared by the IWC in 1994 (to which Japan lodged an objection with respect to minke whales). If a Sanctuary is in place, it can be argued that information on improving management of whaling in that region is unnecessary. On many occasions, the Commission has (by majority vote) passed a Resolution urging Japan not to issue a permit for these catches.

Mean while REAL whale scientists that have been ignored for decades by the Japanese Fisheries Agency are starting to fight back. Japans Fin Whale black market has been exposed once more and brought legitamacy to those that oppose Japans whaling under the UN charter for wildlife.

Forget the Australian Navy or Sea Shepherd shutting down the Japanese whale poachers.
An international team is already forming to do it once and for all.

There is no difference from a poacher who kills a rhino, to one that kills a Fin Whale.
Equality for all

Angry Australians.

2008-12-29T05:26:00.000-08:00

Theres only one man I know of able to unite Australians and Kiwi's in happy hatred. His name is Glenn Inwoods and he is the hype man for the Japanese Whalers. Here is an example of him is full swing.

Now, people here have asked me why people in Australia support Paul Watson? Well a good part of the reason is Glenn Inwoods. Yes he IS hated in NZ too. Elsewhere in the world he is known for his desire to expand whaling by many times to take tens of thousands of Minke yearly.

His quotes today have once again put fire in the bellys of Australians. Looks like we may yet see some naval action after all!

For the moment though, our hopes are with SSCS.
Shut these whale killing criminals down Paul!
And do it quickly!

Encounter II

2008-12-27T01:03:00.000-08:00

Sea Shepherd Clashes
With Whaling Fleet in Australian Waters

0730 GMT December 26th, 2008
Australian Antarctic Territorial Waters

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship Steve Irwin closed in on one of the vessels of the Japanese whaling fleet at 0730 Hours GMT (1930 Hours Sydney Time) on December 26th off the coast of the Australian Antarctic Territory north of the Mawson Peninsula.

The Keiko Maru emerged from dense fog in front of the Steve Irwin. The Sea Shepherd crew pursued and delivered 10 bottles of rotten butter and 15 bottles of a methyl cellulose and indelible dye mixture.

“That is one stinky slippery ship,” said Sea Shepherd 2nd Officer Peter Hammarstedt of Sweden.

The Japanese ship was ordered out of the territorial waters of Australia by Australian citizen Jeff Hansen from Perth, Western Australia. The message was delivered in Japanese.

As the Steve Irwin came alongside the starboard side of the Keiko Maru, the whaler steered hard to starboard and struck the Steve Irwin lightly crushing part of the aft port helicopter deck guard rails on the Sea Shepherd ship. There was no serious damage to either ship.

The Sea Shepherd crew’s objective was to intimidate the Japanese fleet and to keep them moving Eastward out of Australian Territorial waters. The Sea Shepherd crew have been pursuing the fleet eastward for a week. There is only 90 miles left before the fleet enters the New Zealand Zone.

“Our objective now is to chase them out of Australia’s Economic Exclusion Zone.” Said Captain Paul Watson. “I have a chart here and it clearly states that these waters are Australian EEZ. There is an Australian Federal Court Order specifically prohibiting these ships from whaling in these waters. We have informed the whalers they are in contempt of this Court ruling.”

There is no doubt that Japanese whaling in Australian waters has been severely disrupted. Since Saturday, the Sea Shepherd crew have chased the Japanese fleet for 400 miles through heavy fog, dense ice and nasty weather. During that time they have not been able to kill any whales.

“We still have them on the run and we intend to keep them on the run for as long as our fuel resources allow.” Said Captain Watson.

For the Japanese version, try here and here.

Run rabbits, RUN!

2008-12-20T05:28:00.000-08:00

In excellent news the Sea Shepherds have located the Japanese whalers in French waters and are now giving chase through Australian waters. You can read about it here and here. The nation of Brazil has also declared its waters a whale sanctuary in a stand against Japanese whalers. Japan has also admitted its whaling is cruel, no great shock but nice of them to say so. I did notice they neglected to say they gut shoot the whales to avoid damaging the whales ear wax, the wax so important to Japanese whale 'scientists'. Now all we need is for someone to tell us what use the age of a dead whale is? Japan has also asked the world for advice on its PR image! Heck you can even win prizes! Somehow I don't think my advice of "stop slitting dolphin throats and gut shooting protected whales in a wildlife sanctuary and people will like Japan more!" is going to win me the CD of origami designs though :(

All in all an interesting few days. The Japanese whalers are on the run, and I have had lots of visitors here! thanks for that! I will try to update more often if I can just stop posting on the very addictive animal planet "Whale Wars" forum!

In other news Australia has still not dropped the threat of legal action in international courts against Japans illegal whaling but its now less obvious in the news as you can see in these 1, 2, 3, examples. Although it must be said Garrett has become a total joke as far as people concerned with the environment are concerned.

Of interest to many is a plan to get sister cities with Japanese cities involved in whale and dolphin protection. If you have facebook this thread goes into the basics of it all.

:)
Thanks for checking out my blog!
I will try keep it updated as this latest wacky Japanese Antarctic whaling season unfolds! For those of you who were fans of the Whale Wars program I want to give you a sneak preview snippet of a report from season two that I hope will make many of you breath a sigh of relief!

From: Crew - Steve Irwin
Subject: Update 1: Emily Hunter Antarctic whale saving
Received: Wednesday, December 17, 2008, 2:46 AM

Sea Shepherds ship finally arrived on the 10th in the morning and I settled into my new home for the next several months – a big black menacing looking 180-foot patrolling vessel originally bought from Scotland, the land of my ancestors. With a million put into upgrades including a helicopter hanger, this ship had a air of professional eco-warriors. No longer is Sea Shepherd the rag-tag ship with water leaking through and bolts busting off. Instead, the ship was upgraded and ready for war. The crew too is different, more professional and even militant than amateurs. There is a professional helicopter pilot, doctor, engineers, welders, ex-navy, ex-captains, ex-cops. Without a skilled trade in ones back-pocket, one almost feels useless (for me, my written word is my tool, visit www.THISmagazine.ca in the Blogs section, you can read my ongoing campaign blogs – called the Polarized series). The crew included 45 volunteers from around the world including a crewmember from Japan for the first time. And a fierceness, conviction and focus I have never seen so pronounced in the Sea Shepherd crews before. Oh, and don’t forget, environmentalism has gone reality TV, Animal Planet is shooting their second season of ‘Whale Wars’ with this campaign.

Commercial Whaling Re-started

2008-12-05T16:50:00.000-08:00

Already 2 nations, Iceland and Norway have protected whale meat being sold in Japanese supermarkets. The latest shipment is 65 tonnes of endangered fin whale meat caught by Hvalur hf (Iceland), and five tonnes of minke whale meat caught by the Norwegian company Myklebust Trading.

Once again the whale meat has been tested for contaminates on a special scale as opposed to the broad Japanese seafood contaminate standard scale. As usual the results of the tests are kept secret from the public.

Time will tell how quickly other nations will attempt to re-start their own commercial whaling following the lead of these 3 nations. The second age of Cetacean slaughter is upon us, may god have mercy upon the worlds whale stocks, for it is obvious the Japanese will not.

Japan and Australia.

2008-11-20T17:30:00.000-08:00

2500 unique views!
Go me! lol

I became involved in the whaling issue when the Japanese government announced its plans to launch a kill mission against the Humpback whales that I enjoy watching at my local beach. That was over a year ago now, and the facebook group to protest Japans whaling that I joined with a few thousand members, now has over 250,000! We all have our own reasons but one thing is clear, the future of the whales is a global issue and by a massive % the world wants the whaling ended.

Propaganda wars have raged accross the internet and there has been lots of nationalist mud slinging between the nations of Australia and Japan in particular.

I just read this bit of news here and noticed two bits that stood out.

"Japan has nil national interest in the whaling industry," Taniguchi continues. "The stake for Japan is near zero. If Australians criticise the Japanese auto industry, Japan must do everything possible to protect the auto industry. This is not the auto industry."

He is writing a long piece for a Japanese magazine, Wedge, to ask Japanese to consider the balance sheet of national interests. On the other side of the ledger, he contends, "this issue is doing substantial damage to Japan's image in Australia, the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand," the entire English-speaking world.
For a moment this year Australia hoped the whaling problem would disappear. In May Taro Aso, then secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said if Australia's feelings towards Japan were hurt unnecessarily "only in order to sustain such a small industry", then Japan should "address this issue as quickly as possible", according to an official record of his remarks. Aso made fun of the whaling industry's pretensions to scientific legitimacy.

"Has anyone heard of any scientific results coming from Japan's whaling program?" he posed rhetorically.

So thats interesting but it still ended with a sting.

Many countries have an ugly blemish that mars the total image and makes other peoples recoil in distaste. China has Tibet, the US has Guantanamo Bay, Turkey has Armenian genocide, and Japan has whaling. Uneconomic and increasingly costly to Japan's image, Taniguchi expects it will disappear in a few years. But in the meantime, he fears that escalation could damage the interests of Australia as well as Japan. "Japanese children would be horrified to learn that Australians routinely kill and even eat kangaroos, which they think are much cuter than whales."

PS: If you are interested in Kangaroo conservation and protection try out these two links!
Link1, Link2.

The science of wrong.

2008-11-17T01:38:00.000-08:00

"Practices are not prohibited because they are wrong, they are wrong because they have been prohibited."

~ Prof. Leslie A.White, The Science of Culture (New York, Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy, 1949)

Now.
This brings us to the Japanese saying they may lower their kill quota, then not, then maybe. Well... theres a very good reason why they may lower it and it has nothing to do with external pressure.

Rather it is because the kill fleet has lost their fuel re-supply and meat off-loading ship (The Oriental Bluebird) because it was busted doing illegal things & fined the maximum penalty and then de-flagged.

That and the fact that last year the Japanese didnt get any of the enormous endangered Fin whales, but only because they didnt find any. A Finwhale is a massive animal, the second largest ever, smaller only than a blue whale. So its doubtful they themselves expect to find and kill 50 Finwhales. Then again they have already killed 100 of the only slightly smaller sei whales Balaenoptera borealis and they did get 50 of the rare and fast bryde's whales Balaenoptera brydei so it is possible. Even so Finwhales, like brydes, sei and the kings the Blue whales are the most massive creatures. To kill and process is a major undertaking and conditions need to be right

Still the kill fleet includes 8 powerful fast hunter killer boats and a massive floating factory mother ship. This is a large kill mission, the largest of great whales on the planet.

So all the talk by the Japanese of dropping some of their tally in exchange for some sneaky change may all be a bluff, but it matters not. The kill fleet may only be setup to take at max half the butcher list, but if all goes to plan they won't get a single whale.

The anti-whaling crew will never give up.
Never.

A win for the humpbacks!!

2008-11-14T21:06:00.000-08:00

In what is great news to read.

"We received a lot of pressure from around the world, but particularly Australia and New Zealand, so we will not be catching humpbacks as part of the research programme," said Mr. Takaya.

Post requests?

2008-11-13T22:40:00.000-08:00

Curious if anyone browsing this has a subject related to the whaling they would like to know more about. Gimme a comment on this post and will see what I can rustle up!
:)

B00TY POST II

2008-11-09T23:44:00.000-08:00

First there was the booty post and now, a simple update. Dedicated to the big fish. They were fun to catch while it lasted. If you enjoy random, you may just enjoy this post.
There are kittens AND vikings! There is the weird , the nerdy and the pointless!
Take your time. The cake is not a lie. The flowers are real , and the flutterbyes too. If you are not sold there is also 2 bear attacks and the stars themselves! From the amusing, to a simple Learn to type fast program I am sure you will find something useful or at least distracting!

Project tools

This is to help those of you using an online office. Things have really come a long way with very powerful project creation tools being created. Other tools are more specialised for graphs/presentations, or surveys and polls. Sometimes you may need to know the time any where in the world, to shorten your internet links or even need just to convert between money and measurement systems. These let you save websites as fully functional PDF files- Option 1, option2, And this can Save certain online movies. Others are not quite so serious with audio post card creator, sign picture generator, text pictures maker, 3d text modelmaker, Prank caller the official seal creator, and always handy tourist remover! A very handy photography tool!

If you need somewhere online to store files and then send? Try these1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
If you need serious Geek tools try these.

Online surfing

Your IP
This is just lists all the google features on one page, while this shows you the search strings.
This is an upgraded calendar while this is an attempt at a custom desktop. Do you use Gmail? Being able to add notes to webpages, is very handy for you to keep track of your favourites! And online highlighting, makes it easier for other people to skip to good bit of a link you post. This is a very handy map that tracks realtime news events. One heck of an interesting geography lesson!!
Have you used torrents before? Well you use them with a torrent client and they let you find almost anything on the net easily, just type its name into google and add the word torrent to the search. As with everything there is legal torrents and not legal ones. This lets you share logins for places that normally make you go through long boring registrations.
If what you needed was not in there, it may be in this list of internet programs.

Security

Sometimes its best to test different passwords before you use them. For getting around computers that block facebook this can work. To protect from hackers and tools to track spammers. Keep your eyes open.

Science

The biology news network and some pictures of blobs! Ancient greek cities.... the tree of life?learn latin or about virtual water and humans on a cell level. Or see movies about cells and their inner workings! Never forget citizen, YOU too are an animal And the animals are wiping out. Cell by cell and species by species.
If you didn't scratch your science itch yet, try this.

Last up is some videos!

You can find hundreds of good documentary here and here. There is also the Zeitgeist movies and I think the second one of them says a lot of interesting things about our economy. Another good movie about money is this one.
We are a people in danger, and while we ARE making progress on many problems.. as the guru Chris explains the problems are still the same. The same age old problems that EVERYONE can see but that are never fixed. Now this may be the most boring 8 part series on the internet.
But if everyone on the planet watched it, it would wake everyone up to what exactly having so many humans on earth means to us all. Consider using either this or this alarm clock to wake up from the parts, it does get very interesting around part 5.
We have a long way to go as a species, and we will have to learn we are a very small part of a very large universe. That and we need to look out for bears.

If you need a quick game after that epic quest these 150 online games are waiting. I reccomend dino-run, Dolphin Olympics2, ZWOK, Flow, and gemcraft.

If you stumbled in, and enjoyed a thumbs up would be awesome!
PS if you want to take it with you, you could always just put the pages address into this.
:)

Japanese criminal whale poachers have a ship de-flagged.

2008-10-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

The Oriental Bluebird has been de-flagged and I say its time to celebrate with drinks all round. If one thing makes me smile its seeing the obselete and brutal Japanese Fisheries Agencys' whaling death fleet slowly dismantled. I imagine there are plenty of Yakuza sobbing into their saki. LOL!!
This is just the begining.

To the destruction of the shared heritage that is the worlds whales, we, HUMANITY, say NO!!!

Is Japan trying to start a war?

2008-10-24T02:41:00.000-07:00

In what is quite INSANE news, it seems the Japanese are going to violate the Antarctic treaty and send a gunboat into the Southern Ocean. While to many this may seem like just another attempt to assasinate Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson, the fact is that we may just be seeing Japan making a power play for control of Southern Ocean resources.

Exactly what this escalation of Japans aggressive incursions into the Southern Ocean means for other nations of the world is unclear. It does however appear to be related to Japans plans to harvest more and more of the Antarctic krill (whale food).

These are not good times to be a whale. The Japanese up-gunning their kill fleets, increasing their harvest of the whales food and planning on taking not only more whales but also a larger selection of species.

____________________________

In an update on this it appears from this story that the Japanese will leave their navy at home.

A Japan Fisheries Agency official confirmed yesterday that, unlike last summer, there would be no coastguard officers aboard the southern whaling fleet when it leaves Shimonoseki port, probably this weekend.

As for reports Tokyo was considering sending an armed Japan Coast Guard vessel to accompany the whaling fleet, the official said: "There's absolutely no possibility."

Whale Farming

2008-10-23T11:25:00.001-07:00

I have been giving this a lot of thought, and perhaps I have finally hit on the one way to make it a reality.

We currently have the technology to GROW animal tissue in labs.
IF enough whale meat tissue could be grown in a lab to satisfy the demand.... would whaling cease to even have a point?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat

Whale meat is the perfect test case because:
1) its a high value meat and could be an economical alternative to wild harvest.
2) the meat suffers none of the contamination problems
3) the meat is never attached to this planets largest and most complex brain in the first place
4) would help prevent whale species from suffering extinction
5) gets around international laws and drama
6) reduces racism creation, as believe it or not whale killing does result in some anger against 127 million Japanese despite it being the actions of maybe 200 Japanese fishermen behind the whale/dolphin killings
7) halts the destruction of breeding stocks in recovering whale populations
8) is an actual science, and can be started with non-lethal flesh plugs
9) Japanese have no 'culture' of HUNTING whales in the Southern Ocean but do have some history of EATING large whales. Therefor lab grown whale meat WOULD PRESERVE WHALE EATING FOOD CULTURE while avoiding the ethical nightmare and global condemnation from killing live whales.
10) its a chance for Japan to show the world they lead the way in intelligent technology based solutions!

Its coming...

2008-10-23T10:34:00.001-07:00

Not long now.

BASIC MATHS

2008-10-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

In 2000 the International Whaling Commission admitted that Minke whale numbers in the Southern Ocean had probably been overestimated.
Research has shown these whales are not experiencing a population boom as argued by Japan.

"A female sperm whale may produce one calf every five years, after reaching sexual maturity at nine years. Males reach breeding age in their late twenties. It is not known how many calves a female may bear before reaching menopause or the rate of natural sperm whale mortality. A young whale may suckle from her mother for up to 15 years.

Scientists believe that it takes around 20 years on average for a female whale to replace itself with one mature female offspring. This does not account for the potential adverse impacts of new human-induced threats to whales such as bycatch, climate change, ozone depletion, marine pollution, ship strikes and underwater noise pollution."

"Economic aspects of renewable resource exploitation as applied to marine mammals(FAO Fish Ser., 5, Vol.3) indicated that the slow growth of marine mammals was in direct conflict with profits. Operational and capital costs were sufficiently high to make harvest rates that were biologically safe economically unsound."

~ Colin W. Clark.

The following cetaceans have been killed in 2008 by Japanese whalers.

*100 sei whales ( Balaenoptera borealis )
*59 minke whales ( Balaenoptera acutorostrata)
*50 bryde's whales ( Balaenoptera brydei)
*2 sperm whales. ( Physeter macrocephalus)
*551 minke whales ( Balaenoptera bonaerensis)
*8,396 Dalls porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli)
*7,916 Dalls porpoise (Phocoenoides truei )
*960 Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)
*670 Striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba)
*360 Pacific White-sided Dolphin (Lagenoryhnchus obliquidens)
*100 False Killer Whale (Pseudorca crassidens)
*835 Pantropical Spotted Dolphin (Stenella attenuata)
*532 Risso's Dolphin (Grampus griseus)
*339 Short-finned Pilot Whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus)
*66 Bairds beaked whale (Berardius bairdii)

Kims Antarctica Fairytale!

2008-10-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

We have threats now that international efforts will be made now to arrest 2 Sea Shepherd members for throwing some stink bombs.

This is perhaps typical of todays law enforcement. To pursue very vigorously individuals performing civil disobedience or other protest actions, while allowing hundreds or even thousands of corporate executives to comprehensively break the laws without obstruction, or even with so-called law enforcement's help and protection.

Corporations and governments from many countries have been despoiling this last wilderness continent in complete contempt for international law.

In Japan we have the travesty of police arresting the protestors of a crime while the criminals stand right at hand. As private security for corporations it makes sense to overlook gross malfeasance while brutally pursuing small individual protest actions, which to corporations are indeed the more dangerous of the two.

So the only answer at this point is to use modern technology to act at a distance, and with perfect anonymity. With current communication technology, the means now exist to act in ways that encrypt and squester the identity of the actors so watertightly that no one will ever know who they really were.

Its not just Japan.

2008-09-21T02:57:00.000-07:00

In the world of whaling history, this is the bible.

Now try page 658

My favourite whale cartoons!

2008-09-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

Beached whale
Ball room dancing whale
Whalezilla
Whale love
Fantasia Whales
Dancing whales
Super Ted and the whale
Captain Killmores whale removal
Captain Planet - Fare Thee Whale pt1, pt2, pt3.

Why does Japan kill whales in Antarctica?

2008-09-19T01:40:00.000-07:00

Excuse the epic posts here!
I had a fair bit to say and it took more words than I expected to say it.
lol
:)

After a year of reading about whales I still don't have a real understanding of the basic question in all of this.

Why is Japan defending whaling so strongly?

If I had to bet money on the reason... I would say that the Japanese Fisheries Agency sees itself as fighting some sort of desperate rear guard action over its rights to take resources from international waters. They have decided to invent a game where each species has to 'win' its protection one by one, from the top down. They see a war, fought battle by battle in a logical path down the food chain as fishery after fishery collapses.

Whales in the Southern Ocean where chosen first because of the legal nightmare surrounding them as well as their physical DISTANCE from Japan. I mean when you start a rear guard action the idea is to delay the 'enemy' as long as possible from your 'base'. Its what I would do in their place anyway.

First we stall them for over 40 years on whale protection, then 20 for dolphins, then 10 after that for Tuna, then 5 after that for sardine, then 2 after that for squid.....

But thats not how it works.
Every thing is connected.
As Jacques Yves Cousteau knew well enough in 1970, when you remove things from an ecosystem it creates changes. With whales it impacts the krill which are the central part of the entire Antarctic food web.

I only reached that pattern of thought after enough reading to kill an average person :)
The Japanese do not whale for scientific, cultural or monetary reasons. Of this much I am certain. The whales themselves could also never be considered a viable food source for 127 million people.

All that remains is political/territorial reasons, or the use of the whales as either a method of distraction or a punishment dummy to keep the heat off the big fisheries that are important to Japans food security like the krill harvests and longliners.

I think it is important that all nations work together to keep Antarctica unspoilt, but we need to understand that if the Southern Ocean ecosystem collapses it will impact on the health of the entire sea.

Let me break down what I do know.
The animals are in deep shit & We are in deep shit

You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem.

Live or die.

The difference is what we do today.

Whaling VS Whale Watching?

2008-09-15T19:06:00.000-07:00

Lets take a closer look at that!

First up,

1) NORWAY!

Whaling represents only 20 to 25 percent of overall income nowadays for most of the 30-odd whaling vessels that take part in the hunt in Norway each year.

In that light, whale safaris have become a more profitable business, with lower costs and less conflict. Usually.

"Once a whaler harpooned a whale right in front of us. My passengers, who were German tourists, were horrified. I almost had a heart attack," says Heiki Vester who runs the Ocean Sounds whale safari company.

link

Jan Kristiansen, who represents the whalers, defended the shootings. He claimed the whalers were simply taking advantage of the nice weather, when the hunting is best.

"Many of the whaling boats had been tied up at the dock for several days, waiting for better weather," he said. "When it finally came, we have to make the most of it."

Kristiansen claimed that he and the other whalers "don't have anything against the whale safari boats... but it's important to get across that it's the extreme opponents of whaling that travel out to see whales.

"We can't prevent them from being against the hunt, and they can't prevent us from hunting."

2) ICELAND

Although opinion polls have shown general support for whaling among Icelanders, some shun the meat because of the giant creatures' still-limited numbers. Others worry that whaling will hurt Iceland's image and thus harm its thriving tourist industry.

Eva Maria Thorarinsdottir, marketing manager of Reykjavik's Elding Whale Watching, says minke whales were much friendlier before hunting resumed, but now they avoid ships. She regards whale-hunting as akin to fox-hunting in England: a legacy kept alive only by "proud, rich traditionalists." She adds: "Our business is much more profitable than theirs."

3) JAPAN

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The eco-tourism boat full of tourists came up along side the Baird’s beaked whale as they spotted water from it’s blowhole. The 20 tourists looked on in horror to see the rare whale struggling for life bleeding from a harpoon. One of the two other whale watching ships nearby left when a child started crying.

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Now if thats not bad enough, these whaling nations are also damaging the well established whale watching industries of other nations such as New Zealand. In some cases Japans bully tactics have crossed the line into extortion with certain whales being held for ransom, in an economic standover technique.

Look at the war japan waged on Australias whale watching industry
for example Link 1 link 2 link 3

"Let us kill what we want or we will obliterate your whale watching industry in a single whale kill mission!"

End of the day, kill whatever they can find. They don't care about whale watching -> despite the fact it earns many many more millions of dollars more than whaling does EVERY year.

kill the friendly whales and this impacts on how much fun you can have on a whale safari.

Dangerous Times

2008-09-13T00:44:00.000-07:00

In 5 days.

On the 15th the IWC holds a meeting to decide whether to end the ban on commercial whaling or not.

As it stands the Japanese whalers are engaged in illegal poaching of protected whales in a wildlife sanctuary.

If the ban is ended, then the whalers go fullscale legit.
It will be difficult to stop the industrial scale slaughter that will then begin.
Nation after nation will take Japans lead.

In short, the whales will be fucked up.

I have no real plan or advice that I can give. But this is an end to decades of effort... or at least it might be.
The Japanese whalers are playing a power card, and it will not be easy to stop.

I wish I could give you a version of Al Pacino's Inch By Inch speech
But I just don't have the skills.

So I'm just gonna say if you have an idea, use it. If you have done something in the past, consider doing it again. We have the numbers, we either act...

or we see the whales die in our times.

live or die

Your whales, your choice.

It may be your last real chance to have a say.

A great evil....

2008-08-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

The hypocritical buddhists from the North seek once more to raid the sanctuary. They will come in an armada of killer ships and floating factories. They will bring nothing but death and pain.

They will bring weapons of war, cannon and grenade to the Antarctic. They will bring fuel tankers into iceberg minefields... and they will bring the death scientists who will measure whales, put their earwax in little jars and write up their butcher list.

They will kill the most impressive animals on the planet by blasting out their guts then hanging them upside down to drown or bleed out. Recent footage has shown over half an hour, 6 harpoons and rifle shots to kill a small Minke.

But the Japanese whale killers come not just for Minke. They come for Fin Whales, many times larger. Many times harder to kill. They will die hard, thrashing in a red sea.

Endangered animals with a 0 catch limit, within a wildlife sanctuary.

They will demand the fact they are Japanese makes it all ok. But their race matters not, instead these are men judged by their actions.

Judged and found guilty of obscene and cruel crimes. Guilty of risking the entire ecosystem, of risking the very air humanity breaths.

Its time it stopped.

I really like this song.
Makes me love my nation and all the legends I share it with.
Makes me proud to be who I am.
Makes me strong to act on what I believe in.
Makes me happy to stand up and give those whose power plays impact on those I like, a taste of hell. The whale protectors grow in number each day, we will never give up and the Japanese can never shoot or arrest us all.

Back off Japan.
We shouldn't have to say anymore.
Let alone take action to stop your violation.
You are crossing a line we have asked you not to.

You are forcing our hand.
Do you really want to know how far we will go to save these whales from a pointless death at Japanese poachers hands?

When you listen to Carl talk of monsters,

Of the men who would hunt and destroy a natural wonder.... it does not make me angry like it should.
It makes me sad.

We have people risking the health of the ocean, the survival of our species and yet humanity is more interested in blowing each other up over control of the middle east.

I see the whalers as a greater threat to humanity than the 'terrorists' our governments keep us in a constant state of fear about.

Japan has become an enemy of science. An enemy of reason and logic.
They have let their nationalist pride and ego, blind them to the crimes unfolding in their name.

When the whales are gone, and the oceans suffering... who will we blame?
Ourselves for not acting strong enough? Or the nations that hunted them one by one until they were gone forever?

When Japanese whaling delegate Tadahiko Nakamura was asked if he was concerned about the survival of the whales and would he like to have his children and grand-children see the whales.
His answer was shocking. “No,” he said. “My duty is to my family, my country, and my company and that duty is to make as much profit as I can for them today. I am not concerned with future generations. They will have to find ways to survive just as we must find ways to survive today.”
He was then asked if he was concerned that the whales would go extinct. “They may go extinct but that is not my concern. My concern is to realize the maximum profit from them before they do.”

In that quote and this video we see the same attitude.
If nature has to be destroyed for the Japanese whalers/fishermen to make a $$$$ then so be it! Screw the future and screw the rest of the world!

Its the same, we eat fish and they eat fish... so we must kill them all so we can eat all the fish!

Charming.

Just wait until Japanese scientists discover other animals are breathing oxygen too.

No not just any oxygen BUT JAPANESE OXYGEN!!

OMG!
KILL KILL KILL!!

1) fin whale is an endangered animal, combined with other threats, whaling is sure to make them extinct. LEARN from history! Don't just repeat mistakes as a 'culture'! Grow UP!!

2) Whale/dolphin meat is full mercury, most toxic result EVER was a Minke sample. Many tests of whale/dolphin meat being sold has turned up EXTREMELY contaminated products.

3) The killing is terrible pr for Japan. Do they want to be known as environmental rapists? Do they want hacking up dolphins to be the defining character of their nation? Do they really want to be known as the ONLY nation to kill endangered cetacean species in the whale sanctuary?

4) Japans whaling industry is millions of dollars in debt, its not viable and leads to boycotts. Japans whaling is over 50 million dollars in debt. An operation to supply whale meat to japans richest citizens, funded by the average Japanese tax payer... all while Japanese homeless die on the streets in winter, when they could have been saved with a 20 cent cup of noodles. Surely the few hundred Japanese engaged in killing cetaceans can be found alternate employment so they no longer impact on the sales of ALL Japanese companies?

5) if Japan does it, others can do it and the whales will be wiped out. After all its racism not to let everyone take 20,000+ cetaceans each year like Japan. What right does Japan have to undo the greatest global co-operation on an environmental issue yet?

Today, only one country in the world continues to conduct whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary: Japan.

"There was a time in Japan during the food shortage hardships of the postwar period when whale meat was taken as a valuable source of protein. We are alive today thanks in a very real sense to this gift, so should we not reach out in gratitude to whales now and seek a path of peaceful coexistence?"

This is the message behind a beautiful new animated work by director Yamamura Koji.

Takashi Matsumura arrested by Japanese police for being a SSCS terrorist?

2008-08-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

“In the world of mammals there are two mountain peaks, one is Mount Homo Sapiens and the other is mount Cetacea.”
~ Professor Teizo Ogawa

Does anyone have any more infomation? Is this true?
It means that Japan is no longer arresting just GreenPeace and Sea Shepherd members but has moved onto every day Japanese anti-whalers.

From what I have seen Takashi Matsumura had no connections to Sea Shepherd but just believed in whale protection. He was certainly no terrorist!!

Madness! Our thoughts are with you Takashi!
Hold out bro!

Together we will all save the whales, together we will show that you can be anti-whaling AND pro-Japan!

Eating the “totem animal” of sentimental Westerners can serve to express one’s belonging to “the Japanese tribe."

I don't think you have to eat whale to be Japanese. I don't think that killing whales should be the thing that defines Japanese culture either. I mean really, do you honestly support what Japan has done to the whales and dolphins already this year? I am not kidding, the list below is the bodycount.

100 sei whales ( Balaenoptera borealis )
59 minke whales ( Balaenoptera acutorostrata)
50 bryde's whales ( Balaenoptera brydei)
2 sperm whales. ( Physeter macrocephalus)
551 minke whales ( Balaenoptera bonaerensis)
8,396 Dalls porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli)
7,916 Dalls porpoise (Phocoenoides truei )
960 Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)
670 Striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba)
360 Pacific White-sided Dolphin (Lagenoryhnchus obliquidens)
100 False Killer Whale (Pseudorca crassidens)
835 Pantropical Spotted Dolphin (Stenella attenuata)
532 Risso's Dolphin (Grampus griseus)
339 Short-finned Pilot Whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus)
66 Bairds beaked whale (Berardius bairdii)

And they are not through yet. Now the whalers are coming to kill whales that I enjoy. I like these whales and I am going to raise hell to defend them.

"There is no humane way to kill a whale at sea. Collective action by nations across the globe is needed to protect whales for future generations,"
~ Sir David Attenborough

I love Japan, and I have never met a Japanese person I didn't like.
So, I apologise in advance if I cause offence along the way. These whales are important to me though, and I am not being anti-Japanese for sticking up for them. I will try and stop ANYONE who tries to kill them.

"It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese."
~ Carl Sagan

BOOTY POST!

2008-08-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

WELCOME MY FRIEND T O ,

TAKASITO

A N T I -WHALING BLOG !

Booty Post

LOL enjoy your stay :)

If you do, give us a stumble thumbs up! Theres lots of good data here, take the time to explore and you will uncover many gems.

If you feel you would like to donate to the whale protection cause, these guys do a wonderful job!

OK beware.
There is a monkey pig.
You cannot unsee the monkey pig.
I will give you 2 choices, I reccomend you do not take either!!

skip to the alien skull

1 DAMNED IF YOU DO
2 DAMNED IF YOU DON'T

I have the alien skull I promised ( or an albino tawny frog mouth)!
Now I realise you are probably as shocked as you were the first time you saw M a r s Bigfoot! (As opposed to common Earth bigfoots)
But from what we know,
Alien skull comes in peace....

TOP 3 FREE ONLINE GAMES

1, Dolphin Cup II
2, Dino run
3, Vector runner

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THE LINK CHEST

Hope You Enjoyed That Random Wander I Will keep it updated

MAPS

Old map from WWII showing new world order! atlas of insanity Secret Submarine Base! People map Carrier top view Me and first other posters from stat counter, hello all, 6th Aug 08 visitor map awesomness map human influence Blue Beauty world flash tour Earth at night Iraq bodycount on US map And of course good old breathing earth Sun light maps 1 and 2 The worlds water graph Ocean Slaughter Australian Territorial Waters A Global Map of Human Impacts to Marine Ecosystems Map of CO2 emission hotspots in the USA oceans atlas Lots of History Maps Monopoly March of democracy Sea Level map Nice map showing the rise and fall of empires trying to hold the middle east. singles map virtual map library old Try new street level view GOOGLE MAPS Climate time machine military maps factory farm map (only for USA)

Music

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62,

Whales and Dolphins are Awesome!

vid1, vid2, vid3, vid4, vid5, vid6, vid7, vid8, vid9, vid10, vid11, vid12, vid13, vid14, vid15, vid16, vid17, vid18, vid19, link1, link2, link3, link4, link5, link6, link7,

Would like to end by wishing Isobel a speedy recovery!

Dolphin Killers II

2008-08-02T23:41:00.000-07:00

Watch this from the Oceanic Preservation Society.
This footage was all filmed undercover and the OPS will be releasing a full length movie documentary in 2009 about Japans dolphin drives called THE RISING. Millions of people across the world will see just how obscene Japan's dolphin drives are.

And here is a video from SaveJapansDolphins.org which shows how and why the dolphin killers hide the slaughter from their own people and the world.
Dolphin Killers Hide slaughter from the Japanese People!

There is also the dolphin dealers
As seen in that video they are shady bastards and above the law.

Of course the most graphic view of the dolphin drive industry remains this one. I don't think its possible to watch without a little bit inside of you dying.
:(

The Japanese Dolphin Killing Fisheries were kicked into high gear after the 1986 ban on whaling. A 1999 Environmental Investigation Agency report revealed that Japan had killed more than 400,000 dolphins and small cetaceans in only 20 years (1979 to 1999) with its dolphin fisheries.

Tuna fisheries, which in the past had high dolphin bycatch levels, are still responsible for the death of many sharks. An estimated 300,000 cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) also die as bycatch each year, because they are unable to escape when caught in nets.

This is a huge percentage of the whales and dolphins killed worldwide, and is a very black and white reason to focus anti-whaling operations on the dominant whaling nation.

When it is released please support the movie

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.

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.

Link

Although traditionally hunted for their meat, the Conservation Society said that dolphins in Japan are used for fertilizer and pet food. The drives, the Whale Dolphin Conservation Society argues, "are conducted as a form of pest control."

link

Two council members from the whaling town of Taiji, Japan, have come out publicly against the feeding of dolphin meat contaminated with mercury to children in school lunch programmes. It is the first time Japanese elected officials have criticised whaling and consumption of cetacean meat, and issued warnings of a potential public health disaster as the country attempts to boost domestic consumption.

Independents Junichiro Yamashita and Hisato Ryono from Wakayama prefecture recently announced laboratory test results of dolphin meat samples at a press conference. “We tested some samples purchased at the Gyoko supermarket in Taiji and Super Center Okuwa in the nearby city of Shingu,” Japan Times quoted Yamashita saying.

One dolphin sample had a mercury content 10 times above the health ministry’s advisory level of 0.4 parts per million (ppm), while the methyl mercury content was 10.33 times over the ministry’s advisory level of 0.3 ppm. Another dolphin sample tested 15.97 times and 12 times above advisory levels of total mercury and methylmercury, respectively.

Human nervous system is sensitive to all forms of mercury. Methylmercury and metallic mercury vapours are more harmful than other forms.

About 20,000 dolphins are killed in Japan every year; 2,300 dolphins are killed in Taiji alone. The town is planning to construct a us $3-million dolphin processing plant.

The news conference coincides with the annual dolphin hunt that begun in Taiji recently. Conservationists oppose this hunt—the largest kill of dolphins anywhere in the world. Every year, the hunt begins in September and continues for six months.

link

A coalition of marine scientists has launched a campaign to halt Japan's annual "dolphin drive," in which thousands of bottlenose dolphins are herded into shallow coves to be slaughtered with knives and clubs.

"We contend that the Japanese drive hunt of dolphins and small cetaceans is a brutal and inhumane practice that violates all standards for animal welfare," said Diana Reiss, director of the marine mammal research program at the New York Aquarium's Osborn Laboratories of Marine Science.

Because dolphins learn from one another, he said, major cullings can have a serious impact on surviving individuals' ability to persevere. "When you remove a bunch of animals, you remove not only them but the knowledge that they have."

link

The guru hoju saram

2008-08-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

I am going to copy paste a comment from here.

Its easy to hand pick the most extreme elements of the anti-whaling lobby for target practice, without actually addressing any of the relevent issues that have been raised. What’s more laughable, someone who says that Whales are intelligent - great laugh, that one - or a body that claims to have a cultural mandate for kiling them, when we all know that there is no link between seaborne slaughter houses operating on the other side of the world and traditional whaling in Japanese coastal waters. Even beter - your quirky uncle would love this one - the need to harvest them on a massive scale to better manage them. Ha!

Lets get to the crux of the matter so that you have something to actualy argue about instead of googling the silliest arguments you can find and barrel shooting them.

Japan is targeted by anti-whalers because

1. They hunt (or hunted until recently) whales that are endangered (fin) and vulnerbale (humpback). Most Cow species a re not endangered.

2. They hunt these animals in what Australia considers territorial waters. Australia designated these waters as a breeding sanctuary, so that the whale stocks might increase from their current levels.

3.Whale -watching is an important industry in Australia and the South Pacific. In Tonga and Fiji, for example, whale-watching is very important to their tourism industries, the funds benefiting many poor local communities. Also, people happen to like watching them, swimming with them and surfing with them (gasp!)

4. The techniques used to kill whales are cruel when compared to other animals. Whales often take up to an hour or more to die.

Japan is targeted by Australia more than, say, Norway, specificaly for reasons 2, and 3. Not, as you suggested before, out of some bizarre link to the Stolen Generation, which I stil haven’t managed to figure out yet.

Perhaps, insead of talking about French sexual theorists, you might consider actually arguing about the points in contention. Just an idea.

Fin Whale

2008-08-02T22:38:00.000-07:00

Status

Today the fin whale is listed as Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and included on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Threats to the Species

The fin whale was spared from early hunting particularly by its speed. However, the 20th century invention of both steam-powered vessels and explosive harpoons changed all that and the fin whale was hunted in larger numbers than any other whale species during this time period. In the Southern Hemisphere alone, approximately 725,000 fin whales were killed. Although provided protection by the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) whaling moratorium in 1986, fin whales continued to be hunted by Iceland for scientific purposes. Current threats include disturbance from seismic operations; collision with large vessels; entanglement in fishing gear; pollution (including noise pollution and increasing amounts of plastic debris at sea, oil spills and dumping of industrial wastes); and a decrease in krill. Fin whales would also most likely be targeted by commercial whaling should such an activity resume.

International Trade
Listed on CITES Appendix I which prohibits international trade.

What about the mystery 2 Fin Whales?
One lead was

You can se Please see recent stranding and entanglement record, kept by Japan's ICR.

Item "M-1199" is for a fin whale ('nagasu kujira'). It was caught in Iwate, in a large trap net (大型定置網). In accordance with the ministerial ordinance, the DNA sample was taken by ICR, and the whale was sold. This whale was 10 meters, so it was just a baby it seems.

But there is also a good chance pirate whalers had put the meat on a black market defended by people in power.

Luckily this last whaling season Japan could not find any Fin Whales to kill!
Yup thats why they call them endangered. Despite being the second largest animals on Earth, when they are rare they are rare.

Human enemies of whales

2008-08-02T19:49:00.002-07:00

Japanese whalings PR companies

Shandwick

By that I of course mean this rebranded company

link 1
link 2
link 3
link 4

You wonder why people say
1) Whales eat all the fish
2) We dont tell you not to eat meat pie
3) Hindu like the cow
?
Well all 3 were multi-million dollar marketting campaigns.

Of course the new wave of bought mouthpieces like Glenn and Flan man are paid to spout the "Minke eat krill" argument... which yes is true... but no does not mean that all the Minke need to die to save the Blue Whale from extinction. Perhaps instead the Japanese could cut back on harvesting krill?

Tele-Press Associates

These are the fellas responsible for constantly attacking the sanctuary.

You hear Japanese people claiming there is no IWC Southern Ocean whale sanctuary and thats Tele-Press in action.

Omeka

Japan's NZ based PR cronies, headed by Glenn Inwood and co.

Parliamentary Whaling League

These are the powerful men who keep Japan a pro-whaling nation.

Many environmentalists around the world hope that the whaling issue in Japan will simply fade with the now moribund industry. In Japan, though, the political prowhaling lobby has never been stronger.

Japan's domestic campaign is backed by the 98-strong Parliamentary Whaling League (PWL), whose members include Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, LDP high-flier Yoshimasa Hayashi (both from the whaling district of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture), Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Yokohama Mayor Hiroshi Nakata.

All the major political parties back whaling -- even the Communists -- and the Diet boasts just one antiwhaling lawmaker, Okinawa's Shokichi Kina. Supporting the antiwhaling cause in Japan would be as politically popular domestically as cheering on whaling boats in the Houses of Parliament in London.

Much as Japan's politicians champion logic and science in the service of their cause, however, it is clear that nationalism is one of the pillars that props up the campaign. Many of the most active prowhalers are on the right of the political spectrum, and the vast majority of the PWL has no electoral or commercial ties to whaling. In fact, only around 10 percent come from districts with a direct connection to the whaling industry.

Discussions in Japan about the loss of whaling are inevitably tinged with loss of national pride.

This from Hamada: "We're talking about managed whaling, so why are we being told we can't take any; that hunting whales is wrong? We were told to stop eating whalemeat because of pressure from abroad, and that it is barbarous. They eat dogs in South Korea and monkeys in China, and they call that barbarous too. We should start by accepting the other side's culinary culture and avoid telling them what to do."

link

Many of the commission's 21 newest members, such as the Marshall Islands and St. Kitts & Nevis, have no history of whaling, while several, including Mongolia and Mali, have no coastlines. All the newer members are developing countries in desperate need of foreign investment, and nearly half are from West Africa.

This power shift could clearly only have been achieved by a sustained campaign to win the support of so-called neutral nations in the IWC -- a fact acknowledged by leading prowhaling lawmakers such as the LDP's high-flying Yoshimasa Hayashi.

Because foreign aid was already used, in Hayashi's words, "with certain conditions," and was "even given to antiwhaling countries," he and other supporters of the Parliamentary Whaling League insisted that whaling -- a matter of "important national interest" -- should be shoved near the top of the list of conditions.

Indeed, the Foreign Office's own records show officials from the prime minister down raising the whaling issue in meeting after meeting with foreign dignitaries. As prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, for example, expressed his gratitude to the president of Nicaragua, Enrique Bolanas Geyer, at a summit meeting in June 2004. One month later, Japan canceled Nicaraguan debt to the tune of $ 118.4 million. Japan's whaling diplomacy has been built on hundreds of similar approaches.

Hayashi explains the impact of this strategy:

"I think most of the countries that have newly joined [the IWC], including the Caribbean, African and Central American countries like Nicaragua, have joined as the result of joint efforts by the prowhaling camp. We cooperate and recruit new countries. You know, nobody joins without an invitation or lobbying (laughs). When the moratorium was passed we were less than one quarter, so now we finally have a majority."

link

Mr. Yoshimasa Hayashi - Member of the Japanese Parliament, Secretary General of the Parliamentarian League for Whaling.

Hayashi YoshimasaA leading member of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, Yoshimasa Hayashi is the leader of the Pro-Whaling League in the Japanese Diet. As such he is maybe the most influential Japanese politician in connection with the whaling issue.

I argue we need a complete list of all the members of the Parliamentary Whaling League along with their contact email and address.

Glenn Inwood

Glenn Inwood is the founder of Omeka Public Relations, a small PR firm based in Wellington, New Zealand.

Background

A biographical note on his company's website states that he "has written and edited for newspapers that include the Christchurch Star, The Press in Christchurch and the Evening Post in Wellington, and produced Radio New Zealand's flagship programme Morning Report".

It also states that in 2000 he won an award from thye Public Relations Institute of New Zealand for "Stop The Wall", "a campaign on behalf of Waterfront Watch, Wellington. (Winner of PRINZ Crisis Communications Award and PRINZ Supreme Award 2000)".

Inwood and the World Council of Whalers

In September 200O Inwood was working four days a week as a press secretary for Lianne Dalziel, who was Immigration Minister in the New Zealand Labour Party government. The other day a week it was reported that Inwood worked for Morris Communications, where he was working on the account of the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission. The Fisheries Commission was hosting the 3rd Annual General Assembly of the World Council of Whalers in Nelson in November 2000. After Inwood's dual role as a Ministerial press adviser and speaker at a pro-whaling conference was raised in parliament, Prime Minister Helen Clark directed that Inwood not to attend. On September 28, 2000 Inwood resigned his position as Dalziel's press adviser.

One of the other speakers at the WCW conference was Eugene LaPointe, from the International Wildlife Management Consortium. In conjunction with the WCW conference, an inaugural general assembly of the Sustainable Use Parliamentarians Union (SUPU) was held and chaired by then U.S. Congressman Richard Pombo.

Working for the Whalers

In March 2003, Inwood was the organiser of a tour of Australasia by the former secretary of the International Whaling Commission, Dr Ray Gambell, who was urging an end to the moratorium on commercial whaling. The tour was sponsored by the World Council of Whalers. The New Zealand Herald identified Inwood as a PR consultant to the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission and Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), the Japanese agency which is responsible for its commercial whaling operations. As of 2007 Inwood continues his work with the ICR. [2]

In January 2006 the New Zealand Herald reported that Inwood also works for Te Ohu Kaimoana, "the sole voting shareholder in Aotearoa Fisheries (AFL), which owns a 50 per cent shareholding in Sealord. The other half-share in Sealord is owned by the Japanese company, Nissui, which is a major shareholder in Japan's Antarctic whaling fleet. [3]

Contact Details

Omeka Public Relations
PO Box 12-490 Thorndon, Wellington
New Zealand
Ph +64 21 498 010
Fax +64 21 787 570
E-mail omeka AT omeka.com

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The Institute of Cetacean Research's tireless New Zealand spokesman is a controversial figure in his homeland, writes Ben Cubby.

TO ENVIRONMENTALISTS he is a 21st-century Tokyo Rose; to Japanese whalers, a hired gun.

Glenn Inwood, the Japanese whaling industry's embattled spin doctor, has one of the toughest public relations gigs in the world: selling commercial whaling to the planet.

A former press secretary to a New Zealand cabinet minister, Mr Inwood resigned in 2000 after the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, found his connections to the whaling industry distasteful.

His tireless promotion of whaling for Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research has made him a controversial figure in his homeland. But the normally garrulous Mr Inwood was reluctant to discuss his role when contacted by the Herald.

"I understand the news interest from you guys, but it really doesn't matter that there's a New Zealander talking about whaling," he said. "It's really not about me; it's about whales."

Mr Inwood is a seasoned public relations operative, but also a true believer in the whaler's cause, according to people who have worked with him.

Drawing on his Maori heritage, he believes hunting whales is a respectable tradition. He has little respect for the Australian Government's position on whaling which, he has written, has allowed emotions to interfere with common sense and international law.

"Its stance at the [International Whaling Commission] reflects an emotive environmental movement that has continued unchecked for 20 years or more, and has even been encouraged for reasons of political expediency, simply because there is no longer an Australian whaling constituency," he wrote in an opinion piece published in The Canberra Times in 2005.

But hunting whales also provides Mr Inwood with his own bread and butter.

The New Zealand Herald reported in 2006 that he has worked as a consultant for Te Ohu Kaimoana, an organisation devoted to advancing Maori fishing interests. It is also reportedly the sole voting shareholder in Aotearoa Fisheries, which in turn owns half of the major New Zealand seafood company Sealord. The other half is owned by a Japanese company, Nissui, which is also a shareholder in Japan's whaling fleet.

An experienced public relations agent, Michael Smith, whose former company took on a contract for Japanese whalers nine years ago, likened Mr Inwood's role to "representing seal clubbers".

Mr Smith's firm, Shandwick International, ran into trouble running a campaign on behalf of the Japanese Whaling Association. The company also had a contract with the International Fund for Animal Welfare to run a campaign in Britain against fox hunting - a deal which Shandwick lost when its whaling work became known to the animal-welfare activists.

In retrospect, it had probably been a mistake to take the brief, Mr Smith said. "It was just a case of the Japanese were sick of coming to Australia and getting ambushed everywhere, they wanted to get their own story out."

Mr Smith, who is not pro-whaling, said Mr Inwood would continue to face an uphill battle to sell his message, but that it would be unlikely to affect the whales themselves.

"I don't think the Japanese really care that much about public opinion in Australia."

Bob Burton, author of Inside Spin and an observer of the whaling industry's twists and turns, said Mr Inwood was a valuable asset for the Institution of Cetacean Research but the public relations battle could not be won.

"It's a bit like the asbestos industry - they are defending the indefensible, and the strategy is to keep on stalling. In the long term, though, it's hard to see anything other than the strategy unravelling."

Tim Flannery

JAPAN, NORWAY, ICELAND

Japan caught out killing endangered species.

2008-08-02T19:49:00.001-07:00

The latest news is that Japan is once again trading endangered fin whale with Norway.

While this is bad it is hardly the first time Japan has been caught redhanded killing or importing endangered whales.

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JOHN HOCKENBERRY: Harvard University Evolutionary Biologist Steve Palumbi.
STEVE PALUMBI: One of the first ones we looked at was what species were really present in the retail market that sell whale meat around the world.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY: The International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1985. But, for scientific research only, nations can still capture the more-abundant species of Minke whales and those animals can later be sold commercially. So, any whale meat for sale should be only Minke whale. Right?
STEVE PALUMBI: Well the problem is, if you ever go to the retail market in Japan or Korea, once you buy a piece of whale meat, it's a tiny little piece of a very big animal, and all the things that you might need to tell what species of whale it was are gone. But that little piece of meat still has the DNA in it. So we developed a way to go into that market, sample those specimens, and then sequence the DNA to try to find out, one, what the species were and sometimes, where those animals actually came from. But we found humpback whales, and we found fin whales and gray whales and sperm whales, and blue whales, and pilot whales, dolphins, porpoises, a huge number of different species are in this market. And that was quite a surprise to people because it was supposed to be a Minke whale meat market, and it turn out to be much more than that. So the DNA testing has at least the promise to be able to keep the market honest. And by keeping the market honest, that means you can at least try to afford protection to species that really need it, where at the same time allowing the exploitation of species that have been recovering and might be able to be fished at some low level.

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This one is from April 2008, tells the same story happening today!

The conservation organizations Earthtrust and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) this week announced the results of 3 years of DNA analysis of whalemeat samples collected in Japanese and Korean markets. Despite the fact that only minke whales are "legally" taken, a surprising diversity of whale and dolphin meat was found, sold as "kujira" or "gorae" (both terms translate as "whale")

One dramatic finding was a sample of raw meat sold in 1993 and analyzed this year, and a sample of bacon sold in 1995. These samples matched the mitochondrial DNA haplotype of a hybrid blue/fin whale taken in 1989 in Iceland. Thus these whale meat samples are either from blue whales or blue/fin hybrids. Further genetic analysis is planned to resolve this question.

"If either one of the 'blue whale' samples was derived from the Icelandic whale taken in 1989, it must have been exported to Japan between 1989 and 1992. However, the last legal imports from Iceland were sei whale (1990) and fin whale (1991). Thus, it boils down to whether the '93 and '95 samples could both have come from a blue/fin hybrid whale caught in Iceland in 1989 and then exported to Japan in 1990 or 1991 as a sei or fin whale and kept frozen there until 1993 and 1995," stated Dr. Frank Cipriano of the University of Hawaii's Kewalo Marine Laboratory.

Noted Don White of Earthtrust: "In fact, in a total sampling of only 150 different products, the only baleen whales not represented in the samples were bowhead, right, gray, and sei whales. Many species of dolphins and small cetaceans were also sold as whale... It's appalling that blue whale meat may still be sold 30 years after their 'protection' by the International Whaling Commission."

The researchers were also able to confirm that meat purchased in Korea in 1994 was from a new species of baleen whale, the "pygmy" Bryde's whale thought to be found only in tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific (from Indonesia to the Philippines). "It is troubling that a previously unrecognized species of baleen whale is for sale in Korean restaurants eight years after a moratorium on commercial whaling," stated Dr. Scott Baker. "Given that we know so little about its abundance and distribution, we need to consider the possibility that the "pygmy" Bryde's whale is being depleted or endangered by even a low level of illegal hunting or bycatch."

"The results of this work show clearly that any whaling on abundant species, such as the minke whale, also puts highly endangered whale and dolphins at risk " said Naoko Funahashi of IFAW.

This is the latest data from an initiative started in 1993 when Earthtrust buyers collected whale meat in Japan and secured the collaboration of whale-DNA scientists Dr. C. Scott Baker and Dr. Steve Palumbi to analyze meat collected by trained wildlife agents. That initial sampling showed a large diversity of products including the meat of the endangered humpback and other "protected" species.

In the years since, the techniques have been improved to the point where previously difficult-to-analyze samples may be readily amplified and identified, hence the new 1993 Japan results. Moreover, scientists working on this initiative have developed a "double blind" approach, in which each sample is analyzed in a somewhat different method in a separate lab, to provide certainty in identification of species.

In addition, surveys and analysis of the Korea marketplace were done in 1994 and 1995, funded by Earthtrust, the Endangered Species Project, Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and IFAW. Commercial whaling is banned in Korea; moreover, these surveys show availability of several whale species which cannot plausibly come from local sources, such as bycatch.

Many additional questions have been raised by this work which need to be answered by Japanese and Korean Governments: Where and when did the blue whales come from, if blue whales are not
being hunted? Where and when did the northern hemisphere minkes come from? The Bryde's? The fins? The humpback? Where are the incidental catch records, if these are from incidental catches?Where are the import permits and storage documentation, if they were imported so long ago and stored ever since?

If stockpiles exist, isn't there a need for them to be fully checked, and genetically tested independently?

The Earthtrust Initiative was funded in 1995 by The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, Humane Society of the United States, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and other contributors. The work of Dr. C. S. Baker, and Dr. Gina Lento, and the collection of many of the 1995 Japan samples and all 1995 Korea samples, was funded by IFAW.

The work of these groups is continuing, with Earthtrust announcing a new collaboration with Harvard University to be overseen by Dr. Steve Palumbi to research new and faster techniques of analysis.

And so, in 1993, the chain reaction had initiated, the Japanese whalers (known for being not so discerning about species - the current philosophy in that neck of the woods seems to be "a whale is a whale, but many yen")

Predictbly, Worldwatch Institute took dna-samples of the whale meat being offered in sale at the Osaka fish market, and, again just as predictably, Blue Whale DNA was found. Is a Blue Whale an endangered species? We'll know for sure when they are all dead.

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Several undercover investigations have found meat from protected whales on sale in Japan. DNA tests have identified meat from fin and humpback whales.

Norway has a ban on the export of whale meat, but on 6 April 1996 an attempt to smuggle 6 tonnes of whale meat from Norway to Japan was foiled.

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Toshio Kasuya, a retired professor who worked for the Fisheries Agency's whaling program in the 1980s, launched a scathing attack on his former colleagues.

"Without the earnings from the meat sales, the whaling organisation that undertakes the government-commissioned research program would be unable to continue operation, and the shipping company that provides the fleet for the program would not be able to recover costs for whaling vessel construction," he wrote in a newspaper.

"This is nothing other than an economic activity. It leaves no room for researchers to carry out research based on their own ideas."

More controversially, he says scientists were told in the 1980s to manipulate the quota of whales needed for research to ensure the program continued for as long as possible. "I regret very much my role in setting up this illegal whale research."

Twenty years later, Japan has killed almost 10,500 mostly minke and Bryde's whales, and has plans to slaughter several thousand more. By contrast, it killed just 840 whales in the name of scientific research between 1954 and the international moratorium on commercial whaling, imposed in 1986.

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Reuters
26 May 2003

Norway faces high hurdles for Japan whale sales
By Elaine Lies

TOKYO, May 26 (Reuters) - Top Norwegian officials arrived in Japan on Monday to promote their nation's seafood, but their long-term hopes to sell whale meat could be scuppered by worries that the delicacy is contaminated by toxic chemicals.

Tokyo and Norway have been discussing whale imports for over a year, but plans to resume the controversial trade were dealt a blow earlier this month when Norwegian scientists ruled that whale blubber it had hoped to sell to Japan contained dangerously high levels of banned PCB chemicals.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were formerly used in everything from paint to plastics. They build up in fatty tissues and have been linked to birth defects.

The blubber contamination could cast a pall over talks on other whale products, such as meat, that are likely to arise during the visit of Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, who arrived on Monday, and Fisheries Minister Svein Ludvigsen, who came on Sunday.

Oslo resumed the commercial hunting of minke whales in 1993, breaking with an international moratorium. Sales of the creamy blubber -- some 500 tonnes of which are stored in freezer warehouses in Norway -- were long seen as a potential gold mine if exported to Japan, where it is a delicacy.

Japanese officials, though, say food safety is paramount.

"It's all about safety," said a Fisheries Ministry official. "The fact that they can't sell the blubber raises questions about the rest of the meat.

"Whale trade is quite a big issue internationally and so we must proceed prudently."

Whale was an important source of protein in an impoverished Japan after World War Two, but has become a scarce, gourmet food in the last few decades as prices rose and supplies fell.

Media reports -- denied by officials -- have said whale imports were planned to bring down the price and spur consumption.

Consumer groups strongly oppose any imports.

"Not only the blubber, but also the red meat is contaminated," said Yoko Tomiyama, head of the Japan Consumers Union, citing a recent Norwegian warning that pregnant women should not eat whale because of high levels of toxic mercury.

"This should not be imported to Japan, and we have made our views clear to the government."

Japan abandoned commercial whaling in 1986 but carries out what it calls scientific research whaling, with most of the meat from that research ending up on restaurant tables and store shelves.

Tokyo agrees with protecting endangered species but argues that others, such as minkes, are numerous and not endangered. It has made numerous attempts to reinstate commercial whaling and is set to do the same at the meeting of the International Whaling Commission from June 16.

The official at the Fisheries Ministry said that while the subject of whale imports could well come up during talks that include a meeting with Japanese Agriculture Minister Yoshiyuki Kamei, any fast solution was unlikely.

"Everything won't just clear up quickly because the Norwegian Fisheries Minister is here," he said. "This will take time."

How smart are dolphins and whales?

2008-08-02T19:47:00.000-07:00

OK :)

Whale intelligence is one of those tricky subjects. I can point you too data but you must make up your own mind.

Dolphins save people from sharks, killer whales are smart enough to know that if they attack humans -> humans will wipe them out. Blue whales can communicate from the south to north poles.... well used to be able to, now theres too much interferance! Humpback whales have their own evolving music industry. A whale song can send several gig worth of data in a few seconds. Humans have 3 parts to their brain and whales have 4. Whales can see inside other whales. Whales share the evolved brain cells that humans have... only they evolved seperately. Dolphins can recognise themselves in a mirror, surf, play, blow bubble rings, call each other by name and have sex for fun. lol what more evidence do you need really?

lol

Anyway lets get some links in here for you to chase up!

Yea OK so its just a google search on spindle cells. But the fact that whales have them makes them VERY special, because so do HUMANS!!

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"Good point, Shalom Freedman, and I am delighted you found the article entertaining and informative. Still, you haven't said why whales developed such large brains; why their cerebral cortex is so highly convoluted, and why they have roughly 7 times as many glia as the human neocortex. There are no lose ends in Gina Girl's conclusions, but your conclusion, right or wrong, has its ragged edges. Another reader expressed his opinion on this in a private email to me:"

With reference to your article on cetacean minds at: (very nicely done, by the way), you ask:

"We're now wondering, essentially, what goes on in a whale's head -- and why, if it's supposedly so smart, it doesn't have great works to show for it."

Well, yes, we wonder this all the time-- but I may posit that one answer is in the question. Einstein didn't build any bridges, so what does he have to show for /his/ life? Our hands are beautiful, and useful, but they are not the only way to build things...

Elsewhere you hint at what is more likely, I think: "...they think not more weakly but just much differently?".

I think at least part of the answer may lie in signal processing. For example, there is a very curious sound made by the Minke (known rather colorfully in the literature as a 'boing', see Rankin, Barlow et alia), that, when looked at in wavelet space, is very intriguing.
There is an MP4 version up here.

What is seen in this animation is a continuous wavelet transform of this sound in polar coordinates. Slowed down about 10 times, if I recall, otherwise it would be just a blur. Background information is here.

Another example, from a whale not commonly thought of as all that intelligent (the Blue whale, (Balaenoptera musculus/ ), can be seen here.

That image took 240 gigabytes and 21 hours of processing time to reveal...

Anyway, my point is simply that, of course, they don't have hands, and so can not build things. But they can make sounds, and with sound as important as it is in there lives, it may be that they focused on what could be done with the resources they had at their disposal.
by
R. Douglas Fields
Jan 16, 2008 9:37 PM"

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whale speak in picture form

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"The brain of a sperm whale is about 60% larger in absolute mass than that of an elephant. Furthermore, the brains of toothed whales and dolphins are significantly larger than those of any nonhuman primates and are second only to human brains when measured with respect to body size [1]. How and why did such large brains evolve in these modern cetaceans? One current view of the evolution of dolphin brains is that their large size was primarily a response to social forces—the requirements for effective functioning within a complex society characterized by communication and collaboration as well as competition among group members [2–4]. In such a society, individuals can benefit from the recognition of others and knowledge of their relationships and from flexibility in adapting to or implementing new behaviors as social or ecological context shifts. Other views focus on the cognitive demands associated with the use of echolocation [5–7]"

Some more on the Humpback live music industry

Without a doubt, the most interesting aspect of the Humpback whale is it's song. Only males sing! So it is assumed they use their songs to attract females and discourage other males. These songs last upwards of 30 minutes and are composed of 2 to 10 main components - always repeated in the same order. The song changes slowly over many months but the songs remain recognizable to the one sung last year. Over a period of five years, or so, the songs are completely different.

In any given breeding ground, there's an almost infinite variety of timbre, volume and frequencies to be heard. All of the males in the area sing the same song. Small variations sometimes occur which are picked up by the other males allowing the songs to evolve over many years into new tunes.

If you watch a male singer, you'll see him surface for air, then dive under the surface to a depth of 15 metres or so. There with head pointed slightly downwards he begins his song.

Why do they sing? No one has yet deciphered the exact message, but it seems likely that songs attract mates. In the breeding grounds one often sees a female, a calf and an 'escort'. Many scientists believe that the 'escort' is the male singer who accompanies the female waiting for her to come into heat after the recent birth of the calf. If one theory is correct, the etherial songs are mostly designed to sooth and woo the female and only secondarily to warn off other males. Other observations seem to suggest that the songs are a method of establishing a "dominance hierarchy in the breeding grounds."

SOUND IS EVERYTHING:

All of this is hidden from your eyes. To understand the whale and all other sea creatures you must listen to their sounds. In the sea, you might say that senses are reversed. On land, sight is the most important. You can see much further than you can hear. In the sea the opposite is true - you can hear much further than you can see. So whales, dolphins, fish and other creatures that inhabit the depths have developed very sophisticated sound transmission and receiving organs. That's why marine biologists make use of hydrophones to study and record underwater sounds.

It has been said, but is still unproven, that humpback whales can communicate from 'equator to pole'. Not their songs necessarily, but other sounds - grunts, bellows, moans - some sounds that we can hear and some that are below the range of human hearing but which carry great distances - thousands of miles - in deep underwater sound channels. If they do, who are they communicating with? Can a whale in a northern hemisphere breeding ground signal its distant cousin in Antarctica? These are questions that are still to be answered.

One thing that is more likely, is that humpback whales are probably the source of the many legends and myths about sea monsters. Early sailors would have encountered the the eerie songs of the Humpback whale and heard them through the hulls of their ships. The Humpback whale's voice is very strong - much greater than that of the Gray whale. If you happened to be swimming near a singing whale your whole body would vibrate - an encounter that would be guaranteed to feed a myth for centuries!

Saving the Japanese from another major mercury poisoning disaster!

2008-08-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

Learn about the health risks of eating whale and dolphin.
Then join us in fighting for Japanese consumers rights to know the extra 'ingredients' and risks eating whale and dolphin poses.
When scientists record mercury levels over a THOUSAND times the maximum level set for sea food you know there is a serious problem.
Even if this most contaminated meat is being sold to the petfood industry its not something I would feed even a dog.

Japan continues with the dolphin hunts and at this very second is engaged in killing whales in the Northern Pacific. All meat from these hunts is to contaminated to be considered food.

Scientists earn their right to point out life threatening practises. Their words should not be ignored!!

You can do your part by learning about how serious the contamination is and advising those Japanese you meet and like in Japan not to eat it. You may not be able to save them all, but you may be able to save some of the people close to you.

This is life and death here, we are talking about people!!

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Professor Haraguchi of Daiichi College gave a research paper at a Nagoya toxicology symposium in which he and his colleagues urged:

"We respectfully urge the Japanese Government to issue appropriate warnings to the Japanese public about the risks associated with consumption of ceatacean (whale and dolphin) products, and act accordingly to end the unacceptable exposure to such products.
An important first step would be to immediately ban the sale of contaminated products. Our results further suggest a critical need for the government to initiate a comprehensive legal investigation of the relevant food industry, including processing, distribution, labeling and marketing of foodstuffs containing cetacean products."

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Dr. Koichi Haraguchi of Daiichi College of Pharmaceutical Science said that whale meat sold in Japan "exceeded the acceptable levels of contamination" for chemical pollutants such as PCBs, mercury and DDT and that, "more than half of the samples contained toxic substances above the national and international safety standards and were not suitable for human consumption."

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"subsistence Arctic whale hunters on Baffin Island have discovered that mothers can no longer nurse their infants because their milk is contaminated with heavy metals and PCBs. According to another International Whaling Commission meeting, reports on contaminant levels in whale meat in Japan "detected mercury some 1,600 times above the government permitted level, as well as large amounts of organic mercury and cadmium in whale meat that is widely available."

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Dr. Tetsuya Endo, of the Hokkaido Health Science University, the Dai Ichi Health Science University and New Zealand Health Science University conducted a three-year joint study on mercury levels of dolphin meat from dolphins caught off the coast of Japan -- including Taiji. They found very high levels of mercury in every sample of dolphin meat that they tested. Their conclusion: nobody should consume dolphin meat. Dr. Endo is a highly respected Japanese scientist. His report on mercury tainted dolphin meat was published in 2005.

The fact that the Japanese Minister of Health and Welfare has known about the danger yet chose not to warn the public about it defies all logic.

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We know that eating whale meat is a REALLY BAD IDEA and that there is no proven way of decontaminating it.
What follows is a sample of some of the sites that fill the internet.
Mercury poisoning is real and not something to be fooled around with.
Exposing people to it by not informing them of the test results or even a correct species ID (dolphin sold as whale) is just a really low act by the Japanese government.
The meat is bad.... it may not be the reason to not whale... but it is certainly a good reason to not feed whales to children.
It would also be a good idea to educate the consumer so they can make a better call on if they wish to take the risk.

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Mercury and children

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Mercury in food

How mercury gives you brain damage

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User guides to eating Japanese whale

Dolphin drives

Mercury in dolphins

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User guides to eating dolphin

Must never happen again.
Those that would still doubt the horror of Minamata
Try this link for some pictures.
Beware it is very sad, one of those lest we forget moments really.

Whales are increasingly being found with health problems.
Some of these, such as brucellosis effect the ability to breed in whales.
While this infection is also a health risk to human, it is another factor we have to take into consideration as far as its effect on long term breeding by whales.

A link on its ability to infect humans.
Not the sort of meat I would eat RAW!

And now some quotes on it being found in Minke.

Otsuchi Marine Research Center,
Ocean Research Institute,
The University of Tokyo,
2-106-1, Akahama,
Iwate 028-1102, Japan.

Abnormal testes and uterus were observed in 13 males (33%) and one female (3%) out of 40 common minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) in the western North Pacific.
Similar lesions were found in testis and ovary, respectively, in one male (2%) and female (2%) out of 43 Bryde's whales (Balaenoptera edeni) in the western North Pacific.
Grossly, granular lesions with caseation and calcification were main pathological signs, and they were restricted to reproductive organs of mature whales.
Chronic purulent or granulomatous orchitis was observed by microscopic analysis.
Antibodies to Brucella species were detected in the serum samples of 15/40 (38%) of common minke whales and 4/43 (9%) of Bryde's whales.
Neither pathological nor serological change was found in the examined sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) in the western North Pacific and Antarctic minke whales (Balaenoptera bonaerensis).
These results strongly suggest that Brucella infection was involved in two species of baleen whales (Mysticeti) in the North Pacific.

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If a disease that rots your balls or ovary is not scary enough.... consider just how wormy whale meat is.

Crassicaudosis: a parasitic disease threatening the health and population recovery of large baleen whales.
Lambertsen RH.

Ecosystems Technology Transfer, University Science Center, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6068.

This communication briefly reviews knowledge of the systemic disease caused by Crassicauda boopis in blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus), fin whales (B. physalus) and humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Infections with this giant nematode characteristically incite a chronic inflammatory reaction of the blood vessels which drain the kidneys. In this critical location, the parasite-induced lesion can cause complete vascular occlusion and kidney failure. Whale calves and juveniles typically suffer the heaviest parasite burdens following transplacental infection of the developing whale foetus. There is also probable whale-to-whale transmission post-partum, involving urinary contamination of the environment with C. boopis eggs and larvae. The frequency of the infection can exceed 95%. Haematological findings suggest that systemic pathological effects are typical at the population level. Gradual development of occlusive lesions in the renal veins appears to correlate with a major peak in natural mortality at about one year of age. To date, all findings support the conclusion that premature death caused by C. boopis infection is potentially a major impediment to population recovery of affected whale species. This suggests the interesting possibility of actively encouraging the population recovery of three species of large baleen whales. Such a restoration effort would entail remotely-deployed anthelminthic therapy administered, at sea, to infected whale cows and calves.

PMID: 1305859 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

And to cap it all off, a study on the health of people from the faroe's. They are after all big whale eaters.

The Faroe Islands are an autonomous province of Denmark. They have become more and more autonomous since after "World War II" in 1948, and are now dedicated to the premise of independence. Be that at it may, the Faroese people are unfortunately slaughtering whales. Perversely, it it now shown that the eating of the slaughtered whales—which are laden in mercury—is causing the people to literally become mentally retarded, and to be exterminating the Faroese people.

And now it is learned that the whale meat these residents are eating has been poisoning them with Mercury for generations. This is the sort of poisoning that leads to mental retardation in forming human fetus. They are actually taking their ownselves out of the game—by the process of devolution! In fact, two studies, this 20-year (1984-2004) Harvard study of 1,022 Faroe Islands mothers and children from 2004—including this letter from the the chief physician for The Faroese Hospital System stating the mercury found is "not from fish but specifically pilot whale", and this study released last year [PDF] at the International Conference on Foetal Programming and Developmental Toxicity (PPTOX), shows this to actually be the case! In fact, PBS aired this video report on the subject last year. By consuming Pilot Whales, residents of the Faroe Islands are systematically and routinely institutionalizing physical disability and mental retardation!

PETITION TO WARN THE JAPANESE PEOPLE OF MERCURY DANGER

To:

Policy Planning and Communication Division
The Department of Food Safety Bureau
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare
Tokyo, Japan

CORRECTED E-Mail: [email]syokucommunication@mhlw.go.jp[/email]
Fax: +81-3-3503-7965

Dear Minister of Health:

There is worldwide concern that mercury accumulated in the human body may pose a serious health risk, especially to pregnant women and children.

As you know, dolphin meat from drive hunts in Taiji, Wakayama prefecture, proved to be highly contaminated with toxic chemicals such as mercury, methyl mercury and PCBs. Repeated chemical analyses have shown that the level of mercury in dolphin meat is much higher than the maximum allowable level set by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan.

We understand that the role of the Department of Food Safety Bureau is to promote food safety, thereby ensuring the health of the Japanese people. We urgently request the following:

1. Prohibit the sale of dolphin meat that contains mercury exceeding the maximum allowable level set by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW). The sale of food items with toxic agricultural chemicals exceeding the maximum allowable level set by MHLW is already prohibited as a result of the â€œPositive-list System,â€ which was adopted in 2006. Since mercury is as harmful to the human body as toxic agricultural chemicals, the â€œPositive-list Systemâ€ should also apply to mercury.

2. Until the above request is put into effect, consumers must be warned of the dangers associated with consuming mercury contaminated dolphin meat, in much the same way they are being warned of the health risks associated with smoking cigarettes: Every store that sells dolphin meat must be obligated to post a prominent warning label on each meat package, stating as follows: "This food item possibly contains mercury exceeding the maximum allowable level set by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Mercury accumulated in the human body may harm your health.â€

Sincerely,

Name & address: ____________________

Is Eating Whale Meat Linked To Parkinson's Disease?

On the 5 August 2008 KNR news reported that 'Pilot whale meat inceases risk of Parkinson’s disease'

The report went on to say that 'Pilot whale [meat] is suspected as a reason why Faroese have twice as much risk of getting Parkinson’s than Danes

Until now researchers have been unable to explain the higher occurrence of this serious disease in the Faroese.

“ But results indicate that diet could play a role in the higher occurrence of Parkinson’s syndrom” explains Pal Weihe who is head of Arbejdsmedicin and Folkesunhedmedicin section in the Faroese hospital. In addition he further explained that an increased intake of whale meat and blubber in adults is clearly linked with an increased occurrence of Parkinson’s disease.

The new research which was undertaken by the Environmental Medicine section of Syddansk University shows that environmental toxins such as methyl mercury and PCB make eating pilot whale meat risky.'

Westerners killed off all the whales

2008-08-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

OK how many times have we heard the "It was Westerners who killed all the whales off" bullshit?
Personally I have read it hundreds of times.
It is one of Japans favourite facts to use during ATTACKS upon anti-whalers
The serious suggestion that Japanese whaling played no contribution in the near-extinction of whale populations is a bit of rewritten history that I find VERY offensive.
Well lets have a look at it then shall we?
As a first source I would like to call to the stand....
Toennessen and Johnsen's
"The History of Modern Whaling"
Yep thats a link to the dam book.
Its a respected source, and a good book. Buy it!
If you feel the need to argue the great whales should die you should at least look at the mistakes of the past to ensure you are not encouraging a repeat of them!!

'None of the other whaling nations was in any doubt that the real reason for declining stocks was the ruthless catching undertaken by the Japanese, starting as they did four to five weeks before the others, ignoring the ban on the catching of humpbacks or minimum size limits. Germany, Britain and Norway despatched notes to this on Japan at the same time' (p 469).

Now key points of interest

1) Japanese whaling expeditions were working in the Antarctic prior to the outbreak of World War II.

2) Whaling nations were making efforts to instigate international controls on whaling prior to the IWC coming into being post-WWII. These efforts were frustrated in several ways, one being Japanese intransigence.

3) There was a perception amongst whaling nations in the latter part of the 1930s that ongoing declines of Antarctic populations were being driven by the approach that the Japanese were taking to whaling - killing species that other nations had agreed shouldn't be being hunted, killing lactating blue whales, starting their season earlier that what others had agreed to, things like that. Given what we now know of the population biology of baleen whales, the perception that the Japanese were solely responsible for ongoing declines was probably wrong. That they were primarily responsible for the ongoing declines in the latter 1930s may well be right.

4) The actions of Japanese Antarctic expeditions was considered so bad that three whaling nations (the UK, Norway and Germany) worked together, using diplomatic channels, to object to the Japanese actions. This is despite the diplomatic tensions existing between the UK and Germany - World War II broke out a couple of months later. Clearly folks engaged in international negotiations on whaling management back them thought something was going wrong.

*********************
Yes many other nations whaled.
Heck heres a website on the dam yanks
But at least they are honest about their history.
**********************

Major whaling nations

Germany quits whaling in 1939
U.S. quits whaling in 1940
Argentin quits whaling in 1960
U.K. quits whaling in 1963
Holland quits whaling in 1964
New Zealandquits whaling in 1964
Norway withdraws from the Antarctic Ocean in 1972
Canada quits whaling in 1973
South Africa quits whaling in 1975
Australia quits whaling in 1978
Brazil quits whaling in 1980
Chile quits whaling in 1983
Peru quits whaling in 1984
Spain quits whaling in 1985
U.S.S.R quits whaling in 1987
Norway reopens whaling in its surrounding ocean area in 1993
Japan tests whaling operation in the Antarctic Ocean in 1934
Demmark/Panama/Republic of Korea/Portugal/Iceland/
France/Mexico/Somail/Philippines/Bahamas/
Tonga/St.Vinsent

**********************

The Japan Whaling Assoc offers this time line

9th Century	Whaling starts in Norway, France, and Spain
12th Century	Hand-harpoon whaling starts in Japan
1606	Hand-harpooning whaling by organized groups starts in Taiji, Japan
1612	Hand-harpooning of Baird's beaked whales starts in Chiba Prefecture, Japan (near Wadaura)
1675	Whaling using nets begins in Taiji, and spreads to Shikoku and Kyushu, contributing to rapid expansion of whaling
1712	Sperm whaling starts in the U.S. (US-style whaling)
1838	Organized whaling using nets starts in Ayukawa, Japan
1864	Modern whaling is developed in Norway
1868	With harpoon guns completed in Norway, Norwegian-style whaling starts
1879	A storm claims the lives of 111 whalers from Taiji. This incident prompts transition from net whaling to modern whaling
1899	Japan starts Norwegian-style whaling
1903	The world's first whaling factory ship (Netherlands) sails out to Spitsbergen sea
1904	Norway sets up a whaling station in South Georgia Island; Whaling begins in Antarctic Ocean
1905	First whaling factory ship sails to Antarctic Ocean
1906	Full-scale modern whaling starts in Japan with construction of modern whaling station in Ayukawa
1925	A mother ship equipped with a slipway goes on whaling for the first time
1931	First International Whaling Convention is signed
1932	Claws (tail fin pinchers) appears
1934	Japan enters mother ship-type whaling in Antarctic Ocean
1940	U.S. quits whaling
1941	Japan suspends mother ship-type whaling upon the outbreak of World War II
1946	International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling is signedJapan resumes whaling in Antarctic Ocean
1948	International Whaling Commission (IWC) is established
1949	1st IWC meetings are held
1951	Japan joins IWC
1959	Olympic system is abolished; Self-declared whaling starts
1962	Country quota system starts
1963	Hunting of humpback whales in Antarctic Ocean is bannedUK quits whaling
1964	Hunting of blue whales in Antarctic Ocean is banned
1972	Resolution calling for 10-year moratorium on commercial whaling is adopted at United Nations Conference on Human Environment Blue Whale Unit system is abolished; Catch quota by whale type system startsNorway withdraws from whaling in the Antarctic OceanJapan starts minke whaling
1975	New Management Procedure (NMP) is adopted
1976	Hunting of fin whales in Antarctic Ocean is banned
1978	Hunting of sei whales in Antarctic Ocean is banned
1979	IWC adopts an Indian Ocean whale sanctuary
1982	IWC adopts a commercial whaling moratorium
1985	Japan withdraws objection to IWC moratorium
1987	Japan withdraws from Antarctic whaling and starts research whaling (JARPA)
1988	Japan suspends coastal catching of minke and sperm whales
1990	IWC estimates population of minke whales in Antarctic Ocean as 760,000
1992	Iceland withdraws IWC; North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO) is established IWC completes development of Revised Management Procedure (RMP)
1993	Norway resumes commercial whaling
1994	IWC adopts southern ocean whale sanctuary
1994	Japan starts research whaling in northwest Pacific (JARPN)
2000	Japan starts research whaling (JARPNII) for feeding study
2002	54th IWC meeting is held in Shimonoseki
2003	IWC adopts Berlin initiative
2005	Japan starts research whaling (JARPAII)
2006	IWC adopts St. Kitts and Nevis Declaration
2007	Confrence for the Normalization of the IWC in Tokyo

Another whaling organisation luna offers these body counts for species of interest to whalers today taken in ANTARCTICA.

Minke, Humpback, Finwhale
And to a lesser extent Spermwhales, Sei, and Blue whales.

I dare anyone to do the maths on those species and then claim the Japanese whaling played no part in the near extinction of the species involved! Of course there is also much secret whaling and almost all nations have helped out.

**********************

Whaling is cruel and obselete it must be ended.
Whaling destroys social and family bonds within a whale pod. Whale products are superfluous or can be replaced by substitutes

Crimes and Punishment

2008-08-02T19:33:00.000-07:00

From the original IWC documents -

It recognizes that even under the most favorable management and with the most conscientious and experienced gunners and crews, it is inevitable that some whales will be taken illegally and that a certain latitude should be allowed in assessing penalties for such unavoidable taking. It may be that legal and administrative differences among the Contracting Governments will prevent the adoption of a uniform system of penalties, but it is the view of the Conference that it is desirable that the Governments should provide for the imposition of penalties sufficiently severe to discourage the illegal killing or taking of whales.

So.... where are these dam penalties?
Why did the IWC turn into a toothless crippled old dog that everyone gets to kick?

What Are Your Crimes Japan?

The Japanese are whaling in violation of the International Whaling Commission’s global moratorium on commercial whaling.

1. The Japanese are illegally killing whales from the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary.

2. The Japanese are illegally killing whales from the Australian Antarctic Territory.

3. The Japanese are illegally targeting fin whales this year and humpback whales next year. These are endangered species, and thus, this is a violation of CITES, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna.

4. The Japanese are in violation of IWC regulation 19(a). The IWC regulations in the Schedule to the convention forbid the use of factory ships to process any protected stock: “19. (a) It is forbidden to use a factory ship or a land station for the purpose of treating any whales which are classified as Protection Stocks in paragraph 10. Paragraph 10(c) provides a definition of Protection Stocks and states that Protection Stocks are listed in the Tables of the Schedule. Table 1 lists all the baleen whales, including minke, fin, and humpback whales and states that all of them are Protection Stocks.

5. In addition, the IWC regulations specifically ban the use of factory ships to process any whales except minke whales: Paragraph 10(d) provides: “(d) Notwithstanding the other provisions of paragraph 10 there shall be a moratorium on the taking, killing or treating of whales, except minke whales, by factory ships or whale catchers attached to factory ships. This moratorium applies to sperm whales, killer whales and baleen whales, except minke whales.” Fin and humpback whales are both baleen whales and are subject to this moratorium.

And thats just a start. Japans whaling is no different from poaching elephants or running drugs. The fact it is supported by Japan openly is a blemish upon the entire nation.
As it stands, Japan is a rogue state in violation of global treaties. That others stand by and allow this to happen is a show of great weakness.

Japan, Norway & Iceland - CITES BROKEN - TRADE IN FINWHALE RESTARTED.
"Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.""
-Elie Wiesel-

Racist Cultural Imperialists

2008-08-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

Do Australians hate Japanese?
NO!!!

But some Japanese people seem to think they do. I don't hate Japanese and I don't know anyone who does and I live in Australia. I don't like whaling. I find it offensive and the closer it happens to me the stronger the urge to try to stop it becomes.
I don't like whaling because I don't like seeing the demise of the whales. Just when it seemed the populations were going to recover people are killing them again? Have they learnt NOTHING???
Whales are being shot with canons, and dolphins hacked up with machette. Their bodies are sliced up into little bits and packed in thousands of boxes.
Theres no culture there, its just mechanised slaughter at a point in humanitys global culture where it is unnecessary.

But anyway lets let other people take over.

This link takes you to the Japan Reference forums with

Welcome to the Japan Forum, a friendly online community dedicated to all Things Japanese where more than 30.000 people sharing a deep interest in Japan come to discuss in over 31.000 threads with more than half a million posts!

Anyway I thought this quote really stood out in a thread well secured with UT's.

Originally Posted by MadamePapillon View Post

The fact that the whaling debate now is now riddled with politics and racist accusations just shows that this whole issue has been blown waaaay out of proportion.
The original reason for all this was that Japan was hunting whales while other countries (more specifically, the environmentalists) thought that whales should be protected because of ethical/ environmental issues. The intent wasn't racist, after all, these people go after the kangaroo killings of Australia, the seal killings of Canada ect, any place they see what could be considered the unethical killings or treatment of animals...Japan was just one of a long list off offenders. For some reason or another Japan took this as a personal attack and a matter of national pride. I can only assume it's because they haven't seen those Greenpeace types in action and so though the anti-whaling protests were a racist attack on the grounds of 'western ideals'.
The fact that Japan is a non-western country seemed to inflame a lot of people when it shouldn't have and turned this into a cultural debate and an international issue. I personally don't think it should have gone that far but both sides keep stepping up the attacks and turning a simple animal protection issue into a three ring circus.

Video 1
Video 2

"Whaling is a national symbol against the cultural imperialism of western nations," said Shigeko Misaki. "If we succumb to the moral standards of the western world, we would lose control of our people internally." Despite government-endorsed ultranationalist propaganda promulgated by Misaki and neo-con cronies asserting that slaughtering marine mammals is a patriotic duty, whaling has only a tiny constituency in Japan.

If your in the mood for a bit of satire on the whole situation try this thread but beware... if your not in the mood for lols it may be best to not!

So.... why do the Japanese think people are attacking them by wanting to protect whales?
Its a big question and really these links explain it far better than I can.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
Source document.

Krill!

2008-08-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a krill eye!
Krill really are amazing creatures!
Krill picture

Here is a recent story that points out just how little even in 2008 we know about an organism that makes up the largest biomass of any species.
Krill feed on algae that grows on sea ice! This means they are VERY vunerable to climate change. Remember this krill, that needs this ice for its food, IS THE ORGANISM THAT HOLDS THE ANTARCTIC ECOSYSTEM TOGETHER!!!

The word “krill” comes from the Norwegian language and means “whale food”. ( Krill eaters )
CCAMLR is the group setup to oversee the krill fisheries and prevent them from impacting on the animals dependant upon them. CCAMLR is a Hobart (Australia) based treaty organization.

"Krill in the Southern Ocean are managed by the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which came into force in 1982 as part of the Antarctic Treaty System. The 24 member states include Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Norway, Japan, South Korea, the United States and the European Union."

ccamlr area
Krill fishing grounds
ccamlr quota
Krill catches

It is frequently abused, notably by such super vessels as the "Antarctic Navigator" (Norwegian), and new entrants to the fishery such as Vanuatu.

Estimates in the 1960's of krill "freed up" by the removal of the Baleen whales suggested that a fishery of 150 million tonnes may now be possible, because of the so called "krill surplus" (Ichii)

Krill aquaculture food

This however did not happen ( Krill crash ) and many now believe that whales maintained high krill levels. Whether this was because they influenced krill behaviour in a positive way or whether whale shit caused algae blooms to feed krill (whales = the oceans gardeners theory) or another cause is hotly debated. Whale poo, top water fertilisation

link

Aside from the protected Blue whales, the whales that target krill are the ones also targetted by the Japanese kill fleets. Minke, Sei, humpback and fins. Starting to see the conspiracy? Minke are estimated to consume 95% of the total krill consumed by whales in the Southern Ocean. Krill is overwhelmingly the main diet of minke.
link
The source above does use population data now proven to be obselete (at least double actual) but the conclusions on krill hold true.

"research has found that these amazing little critters are also allies in combating global warming. In daylight, they feed on phytoplankton near the ocean surface.

When darkness falls they sink down, sending waste - which includes large amounts of carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere - toward the sea floor and thereby removing the equivalent annual carbon dioxide emissions of 35 million cars."
link

Sources
excellent document on the entire krill story even if its too much to read, skip to the end so you understand the risk krill is in from greedy exploitation.

Japanese soldiers attempt to assasinate Sea Shepherd leader?

2008-08-02T19:12:00.000-07:00

Japan has shown she means to deploy trigger happy soldiers more frequently in the future. The use of counter-terrorist assault troops raises a few questions but the main one, is what is a terrorist?

Well there are 2 main terrorists really, if Japanese media is to be believed

1) greenpeace = anti-whaling = anti-japanese = terrorist.

2) SeaShepherd = throw stink bombs = chemicals = sarin gas subway attacks = terrorist.

If you belong to one of those 3..... Learn from Paul,
terrorists get shot! Never forget your vest!!

link

Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith says Japanese officials have told the Australian embassy in Tokyo that warning balls or flashbangs were fired at the ship.

The devices are designed to make a loud noise but not to injure

Japan has also advised the Australian Embassy that a crew member on board the Japanese whaling boat fired a warning shot in the air.

link

"Paul,

"I feel it important to point out a few things that I see in your shooting. As you know, this is a subject I know a lot about.

"You were shot by a sniper with a rifle and with a special bullet. The vest that protected you is meant for pistol rounds, not high velocity military bullets. Had you been shot with a military rifle cartage, you could be dead. Had you not been waring the vest, you most certainly been dead by a massive untreatable wound, which is what they intended.

"By what I see in the pictures, the compression of the bullet means it was a soft lead 'Dumb-Dumb' round. Because of the tissue destruction these bullets cause, they were banned for military use by the Hague Convention of 1899 although most people now call it the Geneva Convention. All militaries conform to the convention because no one wants to go there due to the unspeakable carnage they would cause. Even the Nazi SS didn't use Dumb-Dumbs.

"The Japanese Coast Guard (or a special agent - AM) shot you with a Dumb-Dumb bullet which is in violation of the Geneva (Hague) Convention because the JCG is part of the military. This is significant because the world's military will pay attention that the Japanese military used Dumb-Dumbs. It may be one shot, but it is significant and governments will pay attention.

"Next, I want to point out that this was not a a knee-jerk reaction to shoot you. I was the best shot in HQ Company at Camp Pendleton for two years (1966-67), and couldn't have done this in my prime. Apparently, you were shot from high to low involving two moving ships on the high seas. Also, you were probably moving at random, and the shot was within three inches of your heart. This sniper practiced this shot for months back in Japan , and no doubt, they used a moving target ship that was lower than the moving shooting platform, and they practiced in varying wind, distance, and seas to perfect every situation. I'm guessing they brought in a Japanese Marine sniper because Coast Guards don't have this kind of talent. The flash-bang grenades were used to cover the rifle shot but should be audible on tape. Like earthquakes, gunshots will show up electronically from all the other noise. There might be other shots, but I don't think so, it was just one shot, I think.

"The Dumb-Dumb bullet is a give-away because it was chosen specially to kill. No pistol shooter in the world could have made this shot, it had to have come from a rifle and a sniper rifle for sure. The Dumb-Dumb was caught by your vest so it was low velocity such as fired by most pistols. Why would the JCG fire a low velocity Dumb-Dumb at your heart? Well, they didn't know you had the "Second Chance" vest on under your Mustang suit. The low velocity Dumb-Dumb should have blown a 5" hole in your chest and you should have died quickly from massive blood loss. Every black powder (low velocity soft lead bullet) hunter knows the low velocity allows the bullet to expand within the animal causing extreme damage. High velocity bullets go through too fast for maximum destruction.

"So this was a special bullet, probably hand loaded, for you. Low velocity, soft lead for a modern military rifle. I don't believe I have ever seen such ammunition for sale in my life.

"Ok, the Whale Gods were with you. Everyone now knows you have a cop vest under your suit, so you can expect to get shot next time with a high velocity full-metal-jacket round which will go through your vest. The only vest that can help you is the ceramic-plate armor. You might look into "Dragon Skin," which is what most our Iraqi troops want but can't get. When you are outside exposed in confrontation, keep moving, don't stop but for a few seconds and stay out-of-view as much as possible.

"Make no mistake, they intended to kill you.

"Return safe,

Marc"

picture
link
link

If Nakagawa Shoichi, leading conservative, has a virtue, it is his refreshing candor. Back when he was serving as head of the LDP's Policy Affairs Research Council under Mr. Abe, I suggested that Mr. Nakagawa was Mr. Abe's id, saying things that would be improper for the prime minister to say himself.

Appearing on Fuji Television's Hodo 2001 program on Sunday, Mr. Nakagawa said in reference to the hounding of Japanese whaling ships by a ship operated by the non-profit group Sea Shepherd in the Antarctic Ocean, "They have wounded Japanese. If the Coast Guard were to arrive, they should not just fire warning shots, they should 'use force.'" Asked whether he was suggesting that the Sea Shepherd should be sunk, he replied, "Of course."

I think this provides a glimpse into the mindset of the conservative ideologues. Mr. Nakagawa suggests that a violent response is merited because "Japanese were hurt." I wonder, however, if what was hurt was not Japanese citizens but Japanese pride. I get the sense that Mr. Nakagawa is brimming with anger that these foreign activists were able to get away with these actions, which have been condemned by the IWC. And so Japan needs a new defense posture and more assertive foreign policy: Japan must never allow itself to be powerless in the face of foreign aggression, whether in the form of North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens or Sea Shepherd's harrying of Japanese whalers. The harm to Japanese citizens is, I think, secondary; what matters is the harm to Japan's pride. The result is a burning anger directed both at foreign transgressors and at the institutions and individuals within Japan responsible (MOFA, etc.) for failing to uphold the nation's pride.

As MTC noted recently, pride — hokori (誇り) — is a favorite word of the Japanese right. It is impossible to understand the foreign and defense policies advocated by the right without appreciating this concept. Beyond the superstructural justifications for a more assertive Japan (the arc of freedom and democracy, etc.), the conservatives are desperate to be proud again, to meet every perceived offense with resolution. Postwar Japan to them has been one abdication after the other, and hence the postwar "regime" must be left behind.

And hence the Coast Guard should open fire on anti-whaling activists.

link

Mr. Nakagawa seems to have lots of company here in our very own comments. Personally I find statements like the ones below kind of sickening, but at least we have the jocular anonymity and exaggerative nature of the internet to blame for these (I hope). Mr. Nakakawa doesn’t really have such an excuse.

“They are the scum of the earth and I would personally kill every single one of them with pleasure.”
Jockell

“I can only hope that when Paul Watson’s ship goes down, sharks will eat the survivors.”
MK

“It would please me to no end if the Sea Shepherd boat sinks and they actually have to get the whalers to rescue them.”
Aaron

“Pity they didn’t aim for that fat head of his [Paul Watson’s].”
madne0

***

“I felt an impact on my chest at one point,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “I didn’t think too much of it at the time. When I opened up my Mustang survival suit, and I have a Kevlar bulletproof vest, there was a bullet lodged in.”

He said the impact left a bruise.

“If I wasn’t wearing my vest, it would have been pretty serious,” he said.

The gunman on the grassy knoll?

Footage of grenades and round being discovered in Pauls vest

Buddhism VS Whales

2008-08-02T19:09:00.000-07:00

This link is a really good read.

I reccomend it.

There are also whale cemeteries in Japan. I have read of a buddhist ceremony in Nagato
where thanks was given to whales that had been killed through whaling, as well as those foetuses that have been found in pregnant females.
The ceremony also included the naming of these foetuses in a book.

Kinda apt I suppose consider over half the whales killed are females and killing off the chicks doesn't usually do a species any favours in the long run!!
So respect their sacrifice so a few people can eat toxic sushi and give their dogs and cats a whale jerky treat!

Is there truth to the rumour that a nisshin maru crew member hung himself before going out to hunt more whales around Japan in May? Any idea if it was because of depression? Or was he shamed because the whalers had been caught out stealing whale meat? I know the ICR is deep in debt and the Japanese are relieing on whale meat sales to ease the drain on their tax dollars. The theft of top grade whale meat is obviously going to hurt this, the lower grade stuff that is used for pet food fetches a much lower price.
link
or english translation

IF it is true it just seems to echo the whaling boss who also hung himself
after being shamed being caught stealing from Japanese pensioners.

Then of course in early 2007 there was the fire on the Nisshin Maru that resulted in the death of 27-year-old Kazutaka Makita.

Death, depression and shame :(
Not the qualities Buddhism is meant to embrace.

Good resources to read on whaling! Maps, Graphs and Stats

2008-08-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

All copywrites remain with original owners of graphs and maps! I hope you find this a convienient place to find stats. Remember to not treat any of these sources with 100% confidence without further research, but they have all come from reputable sources!

ANTARCTICA
antarctic tourism
ccamlr area
Convergence
Antarctica Special Areas
IWC Whale sanctuary
Australian Whale Sanctuary
Krill fishing grounds
The world map of the whale nations

WHALES
Whale Harvest
Whale poo, top water fertilisation
Blue whale population
populations
population
IWC Great Whale kill quotas
kill quota 2008
kill quota 2009
Small type whaling quota
Minke is endangered?
Minke in decline (jpg version)
Link/quote rich forum post on whaling debate

WHALE SCIENCE
Whales eat all the fish?
Whales should be culled? (source II)
Does Japan need to use lethal research?
Is whaling illegal?
Whaling timeline

KRILL
Krill aquaculture food
ccamlr quota
Krill eaters
Krill catches
Krill crash
Krill picture

FISH
catch by species
fish:zoo ratio
deep water fish

TUNA
world tuna catch
SBF Tuna killers
Tuna species catch

FISHERIES
A sample of species change
Species groups
total species group value
World fisheries
bottom trawlers
world fish catch
status

PEOPLE
Reproduction rate
human population
Developed population
Human population
world fish diet
Pee Sample
online
Networking in Japan
Human population
Fish importance to nation
Fish consumption

DISASTER
Harmful Algae blooms
CO2 production by nation
currents
plastic gyre
global warming

OK next 3 sources. All are respected and well written. All require spare time and a bit of effort to read. But they will open your eyes to what is going on here. The 4th is the "World Charter for Nature" which is perhaps the most important one of all.

1. Swimming Against the Tide: Japan and the Transnational Anti-Whaling Network -- Sund, Allona.

Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Why do some international campaigns to pressure errant states to comply with international norms fail? Ultimately, the success of these campaigns depends upon the vulnerability of the target state to external pressure. Drawing from the literature on compliance, norms and social movements, I isolate three domestic factors that help to explain why some transnational campaigns succeed while others fail: the role of domestic interest groups, the domestic resonance of the international norm, and the political opportunity structure in the target state. This paper seeks to explain the limited effects of the transnational anti-whaling network in its efforts to pressure Japan to abide by the international norm against whaling. In spite of tremendous international pressure and the threat of U.S. sanctions, Japan has remained defiant in its commitment to overturn a global moratorium on commercial whaling introduced by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1986. Japan has also engaged in a highly controversial program of whaling for scientific research in spite of the ongoing moratorium. I argue that domestic whaling interests do not provide an adequate explanation for Japan’s resistance to external pressure. Instead, the lack of resonance of the international anti-whaling norm and the limited domestic channels for the amplification of international pressure were the critical factors obstructing the influence of the anti-whaling network. Indeed, Japan’s defiant response to the anti-whaling campaign has been motivated more by the manner in which this campaign has been waged rather than the tangible benefits of whaling.

link

2) Contesting Global Norms: Politics of Identity in Pro-Whaling Countermobilization --- Anders Blok

Why are anti- and pro-whaling coalitions still engaged in morally heated confrontations over whales tracing back to the 1970s? Revisiting the global whaling controversy, this article applies insights from the political sociology of social movements to highlight the importance of the politics of identity embedded in an elite-driven pro-whaling countermovement in Japan. As is well documented, Japan has proven a most difficult context for the emerging “global” anti-whaling norm. Rather than simply reflecting material interests or cultural values, however, this sustained resistance should be approached from a processual and symbolic interactionist perspective as the construction of a pro-whaling moral universe integrated around strong and inflexible claims of collective identity. Empirically, the article analyzes the major discursive master frames constituting this pro-whaling identity. Arguing for the centrality of symbolic-moral framing, it further suggests three competing normative frameworks for making sense of the controversy in the wider context of global environmental norms-in-the-making.

link 1 link 2

3) Why are the doing all this??? http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~stars/pdf/Ishii_Okubo_JIWLP.pdf

4) "The History of Modern Whaling" -- J.N. Tonnessen, Arne Odd Johnsen

google books preview

4) "World Charter for Nature by the United Nations in 1982"
This is the document sea shepherd operates under. Individuals and organizations can justify their enforcement authority from this document, approved by the United Nations in 1982. The specific relevant portions are in Part III, Section 21 and Section 24.

The General Assembly,

Reaffirming the fundamental purposes of the United Nations, in particular the maintenance of international peace and security, the development of friendly relations among nations and the achievement of international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, technical, intellectual or humanitarian character,

Aware that:

(a) Mankind is a part of nature and life depends on the uninterrupted functioning of natural systems which ensure the supply of energy and nutrients,
(b) Civilization is rooted in nature, which has shaped human culture and influenced all artistic and scientific achievements, and living in harmony with nature gives man the best opportunities for the development of his creativity, and for rest and recreation,

Convinced that:

(a) Every form of life is unique, warranting respect regardless of its worth to man, and, to accord other organisms such recognition, man must be guided by a moral code of action,
(b) Man can alter nature and exhaust natural resources by his action or its consequences and, therefore, must fully recognize the urgency of maintaining the stability and quality of nature and of conserving natural resources,

Persuaded that:

(a) Lasting benefits from nature depend upon the maintenance of essential ecological processes and life support systems, and upon the diversity of life forms, which are jeopardized through excessive exploitation and habitat destruction by man,
(b) The degradation of natural systems owing to excessive consumption and misuse of natural resources, as well as to failure to establish an appropriate economic order among peoples and among States, leads to the breakdown of the economic, social and political framework of civilization,
(c) Competition for scarce resources creates conflicts, whereas the conservation of nature and natural resources contributes to justice and the maintenance of peace and cannot be achieved until mankind learns to live in peace and to forsake war and armaments,

Reaffirming that man must acquire the knowledge to maintain and enhance his ability to use natural resources in a manner which ensures the preservation of the species and ecosystems for the benefit of present and future generations,

Firmly convinced of the need for appropriate measures, at the national and international, individual and collective, and private and public levels, to protect nature and promote international co-operation in this field,

Adopts, to these ends, the present World Charter for Nature, which proclaims the following principles of conservation by which all human conduct affecting nature is to be guided and judged.

I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES

1. Nature shall be respected and its essential processes shall not be impaired.

2. The genetic viability on the earth shall not be compromised; the population levels of all life forms, wild and domesticated, must be at least sufficient for their survival, and to this end necessary habitat shall be safeguarded.

3. All areas of the earth, both land and sea, shall be subject to these principles of conservation; special protection shall be given to unique areas, to representative samples of all the different types of ecosystems and to the habitat of rare or endangered species.

4. Ecosystems and organisms, as well as the land, marine and atmospheric resources that are utilized by man, shall be managed to achieve and maintain optimum sustainable productivity, but not in such a way as to endanger the integrity of those other ecosystems or species with which they coexist.

5. Nature shall be secured against degradation caused by warfare or other hostile activities.

II. FUNCTIONS

6. In the decision-making process it shall be recognized that man's needs can be met only by ensuring the proper functioning of natural systems and by respecting the principles set forth in the present Charter.

7. In the planning and implementation of social and economic development activities, due account shall be taken of the fact that the conservation of nature is an integral part of those activities.

8. In formulating long-term plans for economic development, population growth and the improvement of standards of living, due account shall be taken of the long-term capacity of natural systems to ensure the subsistence and settlement of the populations concerned, recognizing that this capacity may be enhanced through science and technology.

9. The allocation of areas of the earth to various uses shall be planned and due account shall be taken of the physical constraints, the biological productivity and diversity and the natural beauty of the areas concerned.

10. Natural resources shall not be wasted, but used with a restraint appropriate to the principles set forth in the present Charter, in accordance with the following rules:

(a) Living resources shall not be utilized in excess of their natural capacity for regeneration;
(b) The productivity of soils shall be maintained or enhanced through measures which safeguard their long-term fertility and the process of organic decomposition, and prevent erosion and all other forms of degradation;
(c) Resources, including water, which are not consumed as they are used shall be reused or recycled;
(d) Non-renewable resources which are consumed as they are used shall be exploited with restraint, taking into account their abundance, their rational possibilities of converting them for consumption, and the compatibility of their exploitation with the functioning of natural systems.

11. Activities which might have an impact on nature shall be controlled, and the best available technologies that minimize significant risks to nature or other adverse effects shall be used; in particular:

(a) Activities which are likely to cause irreversible damage to nature shall be avoided;
(b) Activities which are likely to pose a significant risk to nature shall be preceded by an exhaustive examination; their proponents shall demonstrate that expected benefits outweigh potential damage to nature, and where potential adverse effects are not fully understood, the activities should not proceed;
(c) Activities which may disturb nature shall be preceded by assessment of their consequences, and environmental impact studies of development projects shall be conducted sufficiently in advance, and if they are to be undertaken, such activities shall be planned and carried out so as to minimize potential adverse effects;
(d) Agriculture, grazing, forestry and fisheries practices shall be adapted to the natural characteristics and constraints of given areas;
(e) Areas degraded by human activities shall be rehabilitated for purposes in accord with their natural potential and compatible with the well-being of affected populations.

12. Discharge of pollutants into natural systems shall be avoided and:

(a) Where this is not feasible, such pollutants shall be treated at the source, using the best practicable means available;
(b) Special precautions shall be taken to prevent discharge of radioactive or toxic wastes.

13. Measures intended to prevent, control or limit natural disasters, infestations and diseases shall be specifically directed to the causes of these scourges and shall avoid averse side-effects on nature.

III. IMPLEMENTATION

14. The principles set forth in the present Charter shall be reflected in the law and practice of each State, as well as at the international level.

15. Knowledge of nature shall be broadly disseminated by all possible means, particularly by ecological education as an integral part of general education.

16. All planning shall include, among its essential elements, the formulation of strategies for the conservation of nature, the establishment of inventories of ecosystems and assessments of the effects on nature of proposed policies and activities; all of these elements shall be disclosed to the public by appropriate means in time to permit effective consultation and participation.

17. Funds, programmes and administrative structures necessary to achieve the objective of the conservation of nature shall be provided.

18. Constant efforts shall be made to increase knowledge of nature by scientific research and to disseminate such knowledge unimpeded by restrictions of any kind.

19. The status of natural processes, ecosystems and species shall be closely monitored to enable early detection of degradation or threat, ensure timely intervention and facilitate the evaluation of conservation policies and methods.

20. Military activities damaging to nature shall be avoided.

21. States and, to the extent they are able, other public authorities, international organizations, individuals, groups and corporations shall:

(a) Co-operate in the task of conserving nature through common activities and other relevant actions, including information exchange and consultations;
(b) Establish standards for products and other manufacturing processes that may have adverse effects on nature, as well as agreed methodologies for assessing these effects;
(c) Implement the applicable international legal provisions for the conservation of nature and the protection of the environment;
(d) Ensure that activities within their jurisdictions or control do not cause damage to the natural systems located within other States or in the areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction;
(e) Safeguard and conserve nature in areas beyond national jurisdiction.

22. Taking fully into account the sovereignty of States over their natural resources, each State shall give effect to the provisions of the present Charter through its competent organs and in co-operation with other States.

23. All persons, in accordance with their national legislation, shall have the opportunity to participate, individually or with others, in the formulation of decisions of direct concern to their environment, and shall have access to means of redress when their environment has suffered damage or degradation.

24. Each person has a duty to act in accordance with the provisions of the present Charter; acting individually, in association with others or through participation in the political process, each person shall strive to ensure that the objectives and requirements of the present Charter are met.

Old map from WWII showing new world order! atlas of insanity Secret Submarine Base! People map Carrier top view Me and first other posters from stat counter, hello all, 6th Aug 08 visitor map awesomness map human influence Blue Beauty world flash tour Earth at night Iraq bodycount on US map And of course good old breathing earth Sun light maps 1 and 2 The worlds water graph Ocean Slaughter Australian Territorial Waters A Global Map of Human Impacts to Marine Ecosystems Map of CO2 emission hotspots in the USA oceans atlas Lots of History Maps Monopoly March of democracy Sea Level map Nice map showing the rise and fall of empires trying to hold the middle east. singles map virtual map library old Try new street level view GOOGLE MAPS Climate time machine military maps factory farm map (only for USA)

How many whales have been killed off?

2008-08-02T19:02:00.000-07:00

How many whales were there before whalers started commercial whaling?
Its an important question and one that only recently DNA has been able to answer.

link 1 link2 link3 link4 link5

Well it turns out there was a LOT!
A LOT! more than has been previously suggested.

"Genetic variation is related to long-term population size," Dr Palumbi said. "The International Whaling Commission estimates that past population sizes of humpback whales numbered no more than 115,000 before whaling."

His analysis of humpback whale DNA, however, led him to estimate that the past population size of breeding females alone must have been between 125,000 and 250,000 individuals

"Mature breeding females make up about one sixth to one eighth of a whale population, so these numbers suggest a global humpback whale population size [in the past] of about 750,000 to 2 million animals," he said.

You don't need to cut open a whale to see what it had for dinner!

2008-08-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Japans science is a lie!
There is no need for death with so many alternatives!

The Japanese claim they need to kill Minke as part of their scientific whaling. They say they need age data and can only get this from whales wax ear plugs despite the fact the IWC has said it does not need age data!

So the result is that the Japanese do not shoot whales in the head. Instead they gut shoot them with grenade harpoons to avoid damaging the ear wax.

This incredibly brutal method of killing one of the most advanced animals on the planet is uncalled for.

While the footage may not be as horrific as watching the same Japanese whalers at work in Taiji hacking up dolphins with machette, the sight of a great whale being attacked for half an hour is something that erodes a bit of your soul.

The Japanese whaling industry is a disgrace to all mankind.

But you eat cow, why can't Japanese eat whale and dolphin?

2008-08-02T18:48:00.001-07:00

If we eat cows and pigs, why can't the Japanese eat dolphins?

The Japanese people do eat cows and pigs. If these same cows and pigs were as contaminated with mercury as the dolphins, they would stop eating them. The Japanese public who have become aware of the danger have stopped buying dolphin meat.

The recently released report "Troubled Waters" aims at clarifying whether commercial whaling operations are incompatible with animal welfare standards and should raise animal welfare concerns based on aspects of cruelty and unnecessary suffering. The report thus underlines the amount of animals that do not die instantaneously and inadequate out-dated killing methods, criticising the current IWC criteria for determining the exact time of death in cetaceans. The report singles out Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling as one of the gravest welfare concerns, which — according to the report — so far has been inadequately addressed by the Commission. *The study also points to that no regulations — similar to those existing for farm animals — currently exist to protect the welfare of whales during the hunt.* Peter Davies, Director General of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) argues that "the cruelty behind whaling has become obscured in recent years by abstract arguments over population statistics. The fact is that, whether it is one whale or a thousand, whaling is simply wrong on cruelty grounds alone".

Diseases and parasites of dolphins/whales

2008-08-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

So saving Brucellosis Bacteria for last, I will go first with the most successful protozoan pathogen "Toxoplasma gondii" a known dolphin killer. And then Crassicaudosis: a parasitic disease threatening the health and population recovery of large baleen whales.

Lambertsen RH.

Ecosystems Technology Transfer, University Science Center, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6068.

This communication briefly reviews knowledge of the systemic disease caused by Crassicauda boopis in blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus), fin whales (B. physalus) and humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). Infections with this giant nematode characteristically incite a chronic inflammatory reaction of the blood vessels which drain the kidneys. In this critical location, the parasite-induced lesion can cause complete vascular occlusion and kidney failure. Whale calves and juveniles typically suffer the heaviest parasite burdens following transplacental infection of the developing whale foetus. There is also probable whale-to-whale transmission post-partum, involving urinary contamination of the environment with C. boopis eggs and larvae. The frequency of the infection can exceed 95%. Haematological findings suggest that systemic pathological effects are typical at the population level. Gradual development of occlusive lesions in the renal veins appears to correlate with a major peak in natural mortality at about one year of age. To date, all findings support the conclusion that premature death caused by C. boopis infection is potentially a major impediment to population recovery of affected whale species. This suggests the interesting possibility of actively encouraging the population recovery of three species of large baleen whales. Such a restoration effort would entail remotely-deployed anthelminthic therapy administered, at sea, to infected whale cows and calves.

PMID: 1305859 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Brucellosis Bacteria
A link on its ability to infect humans.
Not the sort of meat I would eat RAW!
And now some quotes on it being found in Minke.
Link

Otsuchi Marine Research Center,
Ocean Research Institute,
The University of Tokyo,
2-106-1, Akahama,
Iwate 028-1102, Japan.

Abnormal testes and uterus were observed in 13 males (33%) and one female (3%) out of 40 common minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) in the western North Pacific.
Similar lesions were found in testis and ovary, respectively, in one male (2%) and female (2%) out of 43 Bryde's whales (Balaenoptera edeni) in the western North Pacific.
Grossly, granular lesions with caseation and calcification were main pathological signs, and they were restricted to reproductive organs of mature whales.
Chronic purulent or granulomatous orchitis was observed by microscopic analysis.
Antibodies to Brucella species were detected in the serum samples of 15/40 (38%) of common minke whales and 4/43 (9%) of Bryde's whales.
Neither pathological nor serological change was found in the examined sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) in the western North Pacific and Antarctic minke whales (Balaenoptera bonaerensis).
These results strongly suggest that Brucella infection was involved in two species of baleen whales (Mysticeti) in the North Pacific.

nervous damage link

The issue of Brucella-contaminated minke whale meat
follows several published papers by Japanese researchers
documenting high levels of mercury and organochlorine
pollutants in cetacean meat products being sold for human
consumption, and warnings about the potential health
risks of consuming these products. For example, research-
ers found that in cetacean meat samples collected from
Japanese markets, mean contamination levels in red meat
0025-326X/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2006.05.010

Marine Pollution Bulletin 52 (2006) 1118–1120
Page 2
were 22 and 18 times higher than levels permitted by the
Japanese government for total mercury i.e., 0.4 ppm, with
health safety levels being exceeded by a factor of up to
200 times (Endo et al., 2002, 2003a, 2004, 2005; Simmonds
et al., 2002). Mercury levels in boiled liver were even high-
er, up to 1980 ppm (wet weight) with mean mercury levels
in boiled cetacean liver being considered to be high enough
that ‘‘a single ingestion of the boiled whale [meat] may cause
an acute intoxication’’ (Endo et al., 2003b, p. 416). More-
over, rats fed portions of this contaminated meat showed
signs of kidney abnormalities ingesting just a single dose
(Endo et al., 2003b). Levels of mercury were so high the
researchers stated that they ‘‘could pose a health problem
for not only to pregnant women but also for the general pop-
ulation’’ (Endo et al., 2005, p. 5703) and that ‘‘[m]ore atten-
tion must be paid to the recommendation that whale [organs]
should not be eaten at all’’ (p. 416, Endo et al., 2003b).
There is also a high degree of organochlorine contamina-
tion in cetacean meat products (up to 7.5 ppm wet weight
for DDT and 8.9 ppm for PCBs; Simmonds et al., 2002).
Far from warning Japanese people of the escalating
health risks associated with consuming contaminated ceta-
cean products, the Japanese Government is actively pro-
moting expansion of the market. Somewhat alarmingly,
one of their marketing initiatives is to provide whale meat
to elementary schools for school lunch programs (Kher
and Sekiguchi, 2006). Presumably this marketing is to gen-
erate an interest in consuming cetacean products in the
young, which they presumably believe will be maintained
as these children grow older. However, the ethical and
moral implications of encouraging consumption of meat
products known to be contaminated with mercury, orga-
nochlorines and potentially pathogens, to children who
do not have a choice in the consumption of the products,
is staggering. This is particularly so when one considers
that studies in such areas as the Faeroe Islands have linked
mercury toxicity, in which consumption of mercury-
contaminated cetacean meat may play a major part, to
brain stem damage, mental retardation, and neurological
and heart abnormalities in children (Grandjean et al.,
1997; Steuerwald et al., 2000; Grandjean et al., 2004; Mur-
ata et al., 2004).
The Japanese ‘‘scientific’’ whaling programme has pro-
duced very few peer-reviewed articles (Gales et al., 2005),
so it is ironic when data published in one of these articles
are overlooked, or perhaps wilfully ignored, by the Japa-
nese government.

Minke are eating all the fish in Antarctica?

2008-08-02T16:16:00.000-07:00

Time and time again we are told that there is more than one type of whale. That the Minke that Japan hunts is not in the extreme endangered condition as other whales. There are 80 whale species to choose from!

BUT the Japanese whalers (And other whalers from Norway and Iceland) are not killing 80 whale species, they're killing minke and fin. They wanted to kill humpback, too.
Minke, fin and humpback are all baleen whales. That means they eat mainly krill, not fish. Saying that baleen whales eat a lot of fish in the Western North Pacific does not provide justification for killing whales in the Antarctic. That just shows ignorance and a willingness to accept such a thing to happen in the Antarctic.

It is as if the Japanese government is saying

"We've over-fished the tuna, and those few that remain are being eaten in abundance by the remaining whales in this planet. We must therefore kill many of them to save the tuna. LOL"

And people are believing them.... nobody talks about the krill. Just like nobody talks about oil when they discuss Iraq. I find it kinda ironic that perhaps the first tussles in the Antarctic will be over krill fishing rights/quota. It is a massive industry that dwarfs whaling.

They say the krill is/was the most common organism on Earth. Crazy really, little things. Like perfect food and they take years to mature. How they ever managed to reach such numbers is crazy, but when the thirst for krill oil comes will their numbers be enough?

And now back over the same old story.
Whale meat was never a regular part of 'traditional' Japanese diet until after World War Two when commercial whaling became possible on an unprecedented scale because of modern harpoons and other hunting technology. There was a temporary, unsustainable glut of whale meat on the market to the point where it was so cheap it was being served in kids school lunches.

Does anybody seriously think that it would be possible for Japan's population of 127 million to regularly eat whale meat without driving them to extinction?
That is a serious question!!

Whaling is a sustainable green business? This is the lunatic fringe argument. The related lunatic fringe argument is that Japan needs to whale because it's short of food.

How would the average Japanese person feel if "Westerner's" were doing 'scientific hunting' of tuna in Japans disputed territorial waters?

If you are Japanese and feel whaling is such a large part of your 'tradition' and 'heritage', then I strongly encourage you to press the Japanese government to fish for whales in Japanese waters. For the sustainable whale population in Japan! Prove to the world that killing thousands of whales from populations does not effect their numbers.

I was asked if Tuna went extinct/was protected, would whale become a substitute. I have no idea, I hope not.

Its a stupid little loophole that lets an elite few pimp endangered animal 'bush meat' to a potentially massive market and it needs to be closed.

"So if yearly
5% of the Minke are caught as bycatch by fisheries
4% die from eating plastic bags
3% get tangled in old fishing gear
2% die of the brucella disease
1% get harpooned by the Japanese"

Whales are in big trouble as it is, as a right whale how it feels about ship strikes?
Let us start solving the problems these whales face as they enter this crazy future with us.

Tashi Karate writes

JAPANESE AGENDA- according to the Japan Times, an article demonstrated that the Japanese impetus for this is as follows:

Resentments sustain a moribund meat trade, By DAVID McNEILL

Hamada Yasukazu (Japanese LDP lawmaker), for example, is quite explicit about why he sees the whaling campaign as so important:

"I think it is the only issue that shows Japanese diplomacy can achieve something when it sticks to its guns. Usually for Japan in relation to China and other countries, all the diplomatic cards tend to be held by our opponents. The whale negotiations are the only area where Japan can proactively take the initiative. We can show that Japanese diplomacy is effective in whale-hunting negotiations."

Put in this context, the sheer political energy expended on the prowhaling campaign begins to make some sense: Japan can demonstrate its diplomatic clout and show it is not completely deferential in the foreign-political arena, particularly to the U.S. In other words, whaling allows Japan to safely let off steam in the international arena -- without any significant political risk. But that ignores the enormous cost to Japanese taxpayers.

PISTACHIO'S VIEW ON JAPANESE AGENDA: I hope not to misrepresent, but Pistachio has informed me that it may have to do with the Japanese desire to maintain independent sustainability of food resources, so it is not reliant on the rest of the world for its food supplies. He has argued that the US and others may be conspiring by this anti-whaling agenda only to deprive Japan of this independence.

MY VIEW: neither of these views are necessarily valid nor true. The first one is nationalistic and has no merit, it's just infantile behaviour which in more simple terms runs along the lines of "I'll show them how tough I am". It's chest beating, and what's more, it is done by a child from behind a child proof fence while throwing stones at the neighbours dog. In this case, the Japanese don't want an actual war, but they want to stick it up the West because of humiliation they feel from other contexts. And the whales are the victims in this defacto war. Now if you, as I do, feel that animals are feeling creatures with hopes and desires of their own, then this behaviour will seem cruel. If you believe other people recognise that animals have feelings but that they don't care about animals' feelings, then you will regard this behaviour as evil, as I do.

The whales are admired by all mankind.

They are a shared treasure.

Japans behaviour is at odds with the international community and as is mentioned above perhaps it is only the "conflict" itself that the Japanese seek? A chance to be seen prancing on the international stage.

Antarctic Minke/Fin whales are not eating fish, they eat krill. They certainly dont eat baby Tuna.

Yes the Japanese eat a lot of beef, chicken and pork. This is not about 'meat' its about WHALES!

Whaling and whale watching do not work together well. Whaling = skitish whales and boycotts from whale watching tourists.

Richard SP writes on the Japanese science.

I mean picture the scene in a lab somewhere in Japan.......

Lab tech 1....."i have the test results"

Lab tech 2......"oh good"

Lab tech 1....."the ear wax tells us this whale was 15 years old"

lab tech 2......"wow, that is a good age!"

lab tech 1......"was a good age!!"

lab techs 1&2....."ha ha ha ha"

there is excellent evidence that whalers will use whale watching ships to 'spot' whales. Then will move over and kill any that are boat friendly. You see killing the friendliest whales is more natural because you don't burn as much fuel chasing them down. Is more natural green food than beef! Whale watching and whaling industry work well together because then whalers do not need to use spotters, or the whale satelites to find the whales.

You see in Iceland, Norway and Japan there have been instances where people going whale watching have instead got a very up close and personal view of whaling. I think the chance you will see the thing you like hit with an explosive harpoon may take away some of the drive to see them at such a location.
Don't these whales talk to each other over large distances? I know the data compression on the short Minke calls is very complex and I am sure theres a sound for --- "Oh man, epic pain. Dying."

I think people need to think of more industry that does not impact on the whales, and yet involves them. I believe if all the mature whales were tagged, and counted, they would achieve a more solid value. If something can be counted and checked, it can be graphed and traded. Whales the new green stocks... I'll give ya 1000 carbons for one?

If they can be tracked by satelite 24 hours a day, and viewed via a live internet site by any one.... they would have commercial value too even for commercial value. Can Nike keep Humpback 7524 "mary" alive longer than Puma can keep Finwhale406 "wet willy" aliive?

The fact is that while we only have *I am so many % sure I am right about this average maybe* statistics to go off for even Minke the one species the whalers of the world want to slaughter in large numbers that it doesn't seem right to talk about 'sustainable'.

How would you know or check if it was?

How do you know how many are killed, if you dont know how many there are to start with.

To people that say tagging whales is impossible, that is a joke. We have used 5% of our tagging ability. Why not build a tag capable of detecting other nearby whales and then auto firing and tagging them?

We have the technology, you can buy it all on ebay. But with co-operation of worlds scientists we could have the worlds whales tagged in 5 years. The tech on making things smaller is really starting to happen, as is the killbot tech. I am sure a harmless tagger mech parasite can be used to exploit whales social side.

At this point much of what we talk about is guess work. If the Soviets were able to whale an extra secret 100,000 whales and no one was the wiser.... what stops anyone else? Global tagging would help destroy pirate whaling once and for all. Have the tag rigged to GPS distress beacon and heart beat monitor. Live upload of a time and place of death, perhaps someone will even be nice enough to take a satelite snap too.

If whales are a shared treasure then let us treat them as such. Bring in the accounts, tally and track. Invest and advertise into culture.

To quote a German perspective ---

The recently released report "Troubled Waters" aims at clarifying whether commercial whaling operations are incompatible with animal welfare standards and should raise animal welfare concerns based on aspects of cruelty and unnecessary suffering. The report thus underlines the amount of animals that do not die instantaneously and inadequate out-dated killing methods, criticising the current IWC criteria for determining the exact time of death in cetaceans. The report singles out Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling as one of the gravest welfare concerns, which — according to the report — so far has been inadequately addressed by the Commission. The study also points to that no regulations — similar to those existing for farm animals — currently exist to protect the welfare of whales during the hunt. Peter Davies, Director General of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) argues that "the cruelty behind whaling has become obscured in recent years by abstract arguments over population statistics. The fact is that, whether it is one whale or a thousand, whaling is simply wrong on cruelty grounds alone".

Link

"The loss of more than 800,000 humpback, fin and minke whales in the North Atlantic is likely to have altered the entire web of life in that ocean, added James Estes, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and adjunct professor of biology at the University of California-Santa Cruz: "Clearly, the disappearance of the great whale was not an isolated event."

Not only are baleen whales major consumers of krill and small fish, he explained, but when they die, their massive carcasses sink to the bottom and provide vital nutrition for a wide variety of creatures on the sea floor. For example, an adult humpback can reach 50 feet in length and weigh up to 40 tons. Multiply that by 240,000 whales, and the impact of the loss becomes apparent.

"Sharks and killer whales are known to prey upon humpback whales, and their demise likely had a big effect on those predators as well," Estes noted. "So the implications of the Roman-Palumbi study for ocean conservation are startling. It could entirely redefine our recovery criteria for whales." "

I realise they are talking about the Northern Hemisphere, not the Southern Hemisphere, but the principle remains the same. And note they include the demise of the Minke Whale.

Killing dolphins over krill... or something?

2008-08-02T15:49:00.000-07:00

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?

Whaling found to be illegal, cruel and an abuse of science.

2008-08-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

Peter Davies, Director General of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) argues that

"the cruelty behind whaling has become obscured in recent years by abstract arguments over population statistics. The fact is that, whether it is one whale or a thousand, whaling is simply wrong on cruelty grounds alone".

Whaling was banned in 1986.
Japan still kills around 40,000 whales and dolphins each year intentionally and around another 100,000 as bycatch in other fisheries.
Doesn't sound like a zero catch as the law says to me.

link

Then there is the scenario sketched by philosopher Peter Singer. Evolution, he suggests, bequeathed people a small kernel of empathy, which by default they apply only within a narrow circle of friends and relations. Over the millennia, people's moral circles have expanded to encompass larger and larger polities: the clan, the tribe, the nation, both sexes, other races, and even animals. The circle may have been pushed outward by expanding networks of reciprocity, à la Wright, but it might also be inflated by the inexorable logic of the golden rule: The more one knows and thinks about other living things, the harder it is to privilege one's own interests over theirs. The empathy escalator may also be powered by cosmopolitanism, in which journalism, memoir, and realistic fiction make the inner lives of other people, and the contingent nature of one's own station, more palpable—the feeling that "there but for fortune go I"

In 1973 the “Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species” (CITES) was ratified by 121 countries.

Those animals that are protected by CITES can be found here

and all baleen whales are included under this protection.
Minke, Fin whale, Sei, Humpback....

Japan, Norway and Iceland betray a 121 nation strong treaty with absolutely no fear of punishment. It is a disgrace.
Donate to Sea Shepherd and make your stand as a decent citizen on this planet. Only they have acted under the UN mandate to defend the whales.

Scroll down to where it says 're-afirming'
The taking of marine animals from international waters is counted as international trade.

Is Japan is using loop holes to get through all of the treaties, laws and agreements setup to protect whales? If so, is she going against the SPIRIT of the ban.
Catch limit of protected stock great whales = 0
Japan caught = 1000

Something is going wrong here.

Jan 16, 2008 7:34am AEDT

Australia's Federal Court has ordered a Japanese whaling company to stop killing whales in Australian Antarctic waters. The ruling follows a case brought by Humane Society International, which alleged the Japanese firm Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha killed more than 1,200 minke and nine fin whales in Antarctic waters since the Australian Whale Sanctuary was established seven years ago. The court has no jurisdiction outside Australia, so enforcing its injunction on whaling won't be easy. But the Humane Society says the ruling may bolster Australian government's efforts to have whaling outlawed by an international court.

Whale scientists world wide demand a change to this betrayal of science.

<1>
All the IWC scientific commitee needs to make a choice on whaling is reliable population statistics and population trend data. Japan has never been able to provide it and all the stats we have document only a massive decline in Minke numbers. The scientific commitee NEVER asked for age data, it wants to know how many whales there are, not how old the ones Japan has already killed were. Its like building a coal powered power station to study global warming, or fighting for peace! Lethal age data collecting is simply not needed for the RMP. Age data is a smokescreen, an incredibly cruel and nasty smokescreen that leads to Japanese whalers gut shooting the most impressive animals left on the planet. This is not how a responsible hunter acts.

<2>
The Southern Ocean hunt takes place in the special feeding grounds. This is where whales from all around the world gather just off the coast of Antarctica to chase krill concentrations. There is a VERY good reason this feeding/breeding area was made into a sanctuary! It is the one place ALL the whales have to go each year. It is like hunting beside the only waterhole for thousands of miles. Animals HAVE to show up. You can effectively kill EVERY single one. No matter how rare a whale species becomes ever year it will be at that same spot in the Southern Ocean to feed. The fact the Minke whale population fell by two thirds didn't worry the whalers one bit because they knew no matter how rare all the whales would be in the one area anyway. This is not how a responsible hunter acts.

<3>
Whales face additional pressures as well as hunting. There is significant bycatch of cetaceans in fisheries around the world and threats such as climate change, the use of sonar by defence forces and seismic testing by the oil and gas industries all loom large. The plastics problem is so large it is almost impossible to visualise. So we have a species attempting to recover from massive over hunting, in most cases due to new threats in modern oceans and very low birthrates there is minimal population recovery. So to restart hunting whales, its just kicking the species while its down. This is not how a responsible hunter acts!

<4>
Getting the whales protected was a massive effort that started out with the whaling nation leaders themselves talking about how they could make sure they didnt wipe out whales chasing the oil. It has slowly evolved through much hard work to the protection we have today. If whaling had not been banned we would not have the species will still have today. It really is very insensitive and rude that the Japanese whalers would be able to destroy all of the good results from the hard work of people bringing the whales back from the brink of extinction. We know the whalers lied every chance they got, the biggest offender was Soviet Russia and the market for most of their meat sales was Japan. Because of the USSR's illegal and secret whaling to supply the Japanese market, the humpback whale, is still rare on NZ and Australian coastlines today!

<5>
Whalers cannot be trusted, the protection of protected animals in protected areas has now fallen on the people of this planet.
It needs to be borne in mind that whales occupy a unique political status. No other living resource on earth is under the same kind of multi-national rule as whales are. Since the signing of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling in 1946, it has been determined and recognized that whales are an international resource, not a national one. They come under the global jurisdiction of the Commission established by the treaty to conserve and manage them, and they are not subject to any individual country's arbitrary, unilateral use. Unlike land animals, they dwell and migrate in open seas as part of the "common heritage" of all humankind. Rather than being thrown away for nothing, they should be value added and kept alive!