Whales - Who Cares?

[Winston001]

I'm not a fan of whaling. In fact I'm not keen on any living creature being killed .................but meat pies and steak are fundamental rights!

So we have NZ on the world stage beating up the Japanese, Norwegians, Greenlanders etc for wanting to kill and eat whales. At the same time New Zealanders are killing lambs by the thousands per day, and cattle, pigs and deer by the hundreds/day. Bit of a double standard here.

Except for vegetarians, we all eat meat and thus animals have to die. So why are whales any different?

[Sniper]

Apparently whales are endangered or something and they are worried about getting too close to NZ and harpooning a Kiwi chick.

[SimJen]

Whales are endangered, plus they also kill lots of other endangered creatures during the whaling etc.
The Japs are supposedly killing them for research.....but they end up in restaurants.
People can't just kill shit for no reason, sure they are eating it but its not like they would starve without it (its a high class food for rich bastards).
Our Lambs, cattle etc are all farmed for the purpose of food.
Personally I think people should be Limpet mining the ships.....I would.

[Swoop]

Whales eat too many fish, and are depleting the oceans so must be killed. (according to the reasons given to re-start commercial whaling).

Also they fart.


Japanese research over the last 20 years or so has concluded "They are YUMMY".
More research to come.

[SimJen]

They mostly eat Plankton and Krill.
"The blue whale, which can reach lengths of 100 feet, was nearly hunted to extinction before it received international protection.
It's numbers have dropped from about 186,000 prior to human exploitation, to an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 "true blues" worldwide today."

[chickenfunkstar]

I don't really see it as a double standard. Lambs pigs cattle and deer aren't endangered species which are in danger of becoming extinct. Whales however possibly are.

I'm not sure why Japan is so keen to het back into whaling straight away, especially when the jury still seems to be out on how many whales there actually are. Why not leave it a few years and then there will be even more whales available to catch?

[placidfemme]

I'm not a fan of whaling. In fact I'm not keen on any living creature being killed .................but meat pies and steak are fundamental rights!

So we have NZ on the world stage beating up the Japanese, Norwegians, Greenlanders etc for wanting to kill and eat whales. At the same time New Zealanders are killing lambs by the thousands per day, and cattle, pigs and deer by the hundreds/day. Bit of a double standard here.

Except for vegetarians, we all eat meat and thus animals have to die. So why are whales any different?

Because sheep, lambs, cattle, pigs, chickens and so forth arn't beomcing endangered.... there are millions of those animals throughout the world...

When you look at some whale spieces... there are less than 100000... thats not a lot... and at the rate those japs are killing them off, in 15 years there won't be any left... and that is a terrible loss to the world, they really are kewl animals...

[Wolf]

Because no one is actually farming/breeding the whales and ensuring there is enough?

We slaughter shit-loads of sheep and cattle, true, but we have farms where we breed shit-loads of sheep and cattle. the farmers move said stock into fresh fields, get them checked by vets, dry feed in winter and generally take all care to ensure a large number of healthy stock survive to be slaughtered.

Commercial whaling involves running about killing animals that in some cases are on the verge of extinction without ensuring enough are left to breed and repopulate for later years. The companies have no interest in the future, only the money they get now, so it is no skin off their noses if they obliterate every last whale on the planet.

"But wait," you say, "if they do, they'll go out of business." They would if whales were their only interest but they, like all large corporations have their fingers in multiple pies - some not remotely connected with whaling - and when the whales are all gone the only difference for them is they will no longer have to maintain the whaling fleet or pay the whalers or all those involved in processing whale products because they will be all unemployed.

The company, however, will survive and continue to make money from its other interests.

When the Japs and the Norwegians have killed every last whale, the public of those nations will finally cry and bemoan the fact that they are all gone and they can't get any more whale products.

On that day I will say: "Serves you all right!"

What it boils down to is this:

Humankind destabilises the ecology of this planet willy-nilly - rendering some species extinct, polluting the environment, upsetting the balance of prey and predator and so on.

One day humankind will destabilise the ecology to the point that the planet is no longer habitable to humans (and probably most other animals that manage to survive that far) and the human race will die. That will not be the "End of The World"(tm), merely the end of human life, the end of our reign as dominant species. "God's own image" wiped out.

Out of the ravaged landscape a new dominant lifeform will rise just as the mammals rose after the last extinction and previous species have risen out of the destruction of other lifeforms throughout this planet's history. This world has seen the demise of far more impressive creatures than us and has continued on.

So it doesn't matter what we do, render the whales extinct, pollute our land, air and oceans to the point they cannot sustain us, destroy the ozone layer, even go to all-out nuclear war and spray the landscape with the radioactive ash of our cities - who gives a fuck. A few million years and the landscape will have altered again through wind, rain and surf and will be an idyllic paradise for the creatures who rise up after we're gone and if they find any fiossilised remains of us all they will find are the long dead bones of arrogant apes that got too greedy.

Whatever the lifeform is, it will believe itself to have been made in "God's own image" and will most likely be as stupid, arrogant and careless as us - like the Earth cares, it'll survive them, too, and they too will be replaced when they wipe themselves out - if "Nature" doesn't do it to them before they get the chance.

[Karma]

Wales... who really cares??



Not me!

[The_Dover]

Yeah, but I guarantee that if you got a room full of stoned hippies and tree hugging environmentallist in a room and put a plate of japanese delicacies in front of them that they'd all be gone before the next doob rotation had gone around.

There's no fighting the munch.

[SimJen]

Wales... who really cares??



Not me!

Yeah everyone hates a Druid
Come home to a real fire, buy a house in Wales.

I grew up close to Wales, beautiful countryside in that area.

[James Deuce]

There's fuck all large cetaceans left. Their populations have returned to about a 10th of what they were before large scale whaling started.

There is no need to farm them. None. There is no need to hunt them. Japan, Norway, and Iceland have long replaced the dietary requirements of whale meat with other produce. It is purely and utterly a delicacy. The desire to hunt them is based on cultural resonance, nothing to do with common sense, market values, or need.

The large baleen whales are an important part of ocean ecology. The ramifications of their reduced numbers may include the plagues of poisonous coastal algal blooms.

Next bike will be German or Italian. Next Car will be European. Little wee protest registered. I'll feel good, but the 1000 or so Blue whales left will all be dead in 12 months. There's only 10,000 Humpbacks left. A flotilla of factories and whalers can harvest 1000 a year with ease. So the Japs can eat Whale Burgers and the cosmetics industry can make perfuem.

[RantyDave]

I care. Whales are intelligent social animals that spend their fifty or so years ambling through the oceans gently eating krill and making curious noises that can (apparently) be heard up to 3000 km away.

Here, check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_song

They're huge, fascinating, and despite the whaling ban are still endangered. Are we willing to completely kill off this 'closest thing to aliens' lifeform purely for vast quantities of sushi? If you're Japanese or Norwegian the answer appears to be yes, so the Japanese and the Norwegians, as far as I'm concerned, can get fucked.

But not as much as the Solomon Islands. Here we are, sending troops over to stop the palce from collapsing into utter chaos and the bastards don't even have the decency to vote our way when it comes to whaling. I say pull out. Tell them to go get help from their Japanese friends 'cos we don't give a shit any more. Arseholes.

Dave

[Ixion]

Does this mean that Mr Biff is an endangered species?

Don't like killing anything without need. Less so when the anythings rare and maybe will be gone soon, forever.

Don't see the need to kill whales. In the C19, when there were heaps of them , it was different.

If the Japs are so short of meat protein why not eat each other. Doesn't seem to be any shortage of that meat.

Don't agree with greenpeace or the hippies on much, but I do on this one.

[MSTRS:Me]

[LEFT] There is no need to hunt them. Japan, Norway, and Iceland have long replaced the dietary requirements of whale meat with other produce. It is purely and utterly a delicacy.

In fact, did I not hear on the news last night that Japan has a whalemeat mountain, due to the general public not wanting the stuff, and the owners of said mountain will use it for pet food??