Japan cancels whaling season What do you think about it? Personally, I say good for Sea Shepherd - Japan is breaking an international treaty and unnecessarily slaughtering a creature with intelligence arguably close to our own. I agree with nations getting most sovereign rights except for the right to kill huge numbers of living things. The ethics of meat-eating aside, I say we've got to at least set aside endangered animals of higher intelligence - apes, whales, and dolphins.
and Australia will continue to prosecute the Japanese Government through legal ways in the International Court of Justice... While this is good news, I'd like to echo our Environment Minister Tony Burke in saying that caution should be the approach to this. I can't for the life of me see how such confrontation is going to deter the Japanese Fisheries in the long run. This is my personal view and as much as i abhor whaling in all its forms I can't see the whaling program totally ending through the efforts of a few small sea craft.
Normally I'd agree with you 100%, but the fact that the Sea Shepherd and their supporters managed to shut down the whaling operations of an entire country for the season says that their methods are pretty deterrent, whatever they are. I don't know, I don't watch Whale Wars or anything, but I did see The Cove (documentary about the Japanese dolphin slaughters). I was a marine biology major in college my freshman year because I wanted to work in cetacean linguistic studies, so I am a "save the whales" kid for sure. I don't really approve of violence, but in the grand scale of things I think the "violence" committed by these eco-groups is nothing compared to the groups they fight against. As far as I've seen, the world hasn't been able to get jack done about the whale hunts in international court because the Japanese are being flagrantly unlawful. They think they can do whatever they want and they'll continue to do so unless someone makes it such a pain in the ass to pursue that it destroys the market. Just my take though, I'd be interested to hear someone take up for Japan. I'm all about the preservation of traditional cultures, but I don't approve of whale/dolphin slaughter any more than I approve of honor suicides.
while they're not technically breaking any treaties, just evading the intention of them.... i'm rather pleased, i hope they take the hint and fuck off for good
Japan was never breaking any technical international treaties. The ships were considered "research" ships setting out to do research on marine mammal life. That being said-yay! Cause it was a cover and we all know it. Now if only we could stop overfishing.
Yeah, y'all are right, I guess technically they weren't breaking the treaty, but c'mon, what other group of scientists uses an annual slaughter to "study" a species? Somebody needs to ship a big box of books on measuring qualitative and quantitative data to the major universities of Japan and say, "Here. It's called the scientific method. Use it." It's encouraging to me to hear that most young people in Japan are pretty against eating whale though, except when it's slipped into their food without them knowing about it (as is apparently the case in school cafeterias over there).
