Whales - Who Cares?

[Winston001]

So - people do care. Lets be rational about this:

Environmentalists - farming sheep is totally artificial. Les mouton much prefer the arid lands of Spain and Portugal to the wet boggy paddocks of NZ. We've cleared out the bush, thus permanently harming our natural environment - but that's ok apparently, because that lets us kill thousands of sheep. No talk of trying to recover that environment.

Scarcity - if I pop out to Oreti beach to get a feed of toheroa, I'm in trouble. Same if I pot that nice wood pigeon in Queens Park. But if the local tangata whenua do it - that's ok. Quite lawful. We accept that.

So if the Japanese have a cultural preference for whales instead of toheroa and wood pigeons (both scarce) why shouldn't they be allowed to hunt them?

[SPman]

I hate wild animals - thats why I went bush in Aussie - too many fecking people in NZ, fecking up the environment....

People destroy the natural habitat of a planet that bred and nurtures them, at their own and everyone elses peril. We are well on our way to destroying the oceans - turning them into giant cesspools, devoid of much of the life that sustains the very cycle of life.
The japs have been harpooning ,Blue,Right, Humpback, Sei and any other whale that they can find for years, regardless of moratorium and species specific quotas - so whats new. Im with OAB - should be going out there and torpedoing a few fucking factory ships!
Saving fucking face - mans ego to the fore once again - rather dead than concede the fact that they could be wrong - fuckheads!

[Wolf]

ASome Scientists are now saying that it is already too late to save the planet, that the damage has gone beyond the point of no return.

Psh! The planet is fine, it needs no saving. It'll be around long after we've followed the dinosaurs and all the species that we made extinct. It will bring forth new species to exploit the oil that was once our bodies and to mine the strange deposits of iron hydroxide and hydrocarbons that dot the landscape (usually salted with other metal ores and coal)*, refining the polymerised gunk into useful chemicals and refining the iron hydroxide and other ores into metal.

The simple form of life that thrived in our methane and ammonia atmosphere polluted themselves nearly out of existence with a poisonous gunk we call oxygen and lost their place as dominant lifeform. That's just one of many mass extinctions this planet has seen - some through overpopulation, some through suspected comet strike - ours won't be the last mass extinction on this planet. Earth is indifferent to us as a species, there are lots more variations on this "life" thing to play out.



*The quicker on the uptake will have already worked out that I'm referring to what a landfill of assorted metal and wooden junk and discarded plastic is likely to look like a few million years down the track.

[placidfemme]

Im with OAB - should be going out there and torpedoing a few fucking factory ships!
Saving fucking face - mans ego to the fore once again - rather dead than concede the fact that they could be wrong - fuckheads!

I agree with that. Sink thier ships and fuck them. But that would cause even more of an outcry then the whole whale issue... because now we are talking 'human' lives... That greenpeace boat that rammed the whale ship a while back... even the NZ government condemed them... I say good on them... next time do a better job then just dent the boat... rip a goddamn hole in it and sink the thing...

[James Deuce]

So - people do care. Lets be rational about this:

Environmentalists - farming sheep is totally artificial. Les mouton much prefer the arid lands of Spain and Portugal to the wet boggy paddocks of NZ. We've cleared out the bush, thus permanently harming our natural environment - but that's ok apparently, because that lets us kill thousands of sheep. No talk of trying to recover that environment.

Scarcity - if I pop out to Oreti beach to get a feed of toheroa, I'm in trouble. Same if I pot that nice wood pigeon in Queens Park. But if the local tangata whenua do it - that's ok. Quite lawful. We accept that.

So if the Japanese have a cultural preference for whales instead of toheroa and wood pigeons (both scarce) why shouldn't they be allowed to hunt them?

As much as it galls some people, Maori HAVE learned from the past and are actively espousing managing renewable resource. You don't do that with Factory ships and explosive harpoons. Even Maori Fisheries using modern boats are trying to give overfished beds a break, and you'll notice that fish that used to be thought of as cat food has become a table fish, like Hoki and Trevali.

Japan, Norway and Iceland are free to hunt Whale using traditional methods in my book. Wind and man powered ships and boats, no steam catapults, no floating rendering plants. You search for your Blue for a month, you make your kill, and then you spend a couple of weeks towing the carcass behind your 4 master. Even then the kill rate is too high to sustain Blues as a species, thanks to females giving birth to 1 calf every three years.

[placidfemme]

thanks to females giving birth to 1 calf every three months.

If thats acurate thats even less than I thought

[Pwalo]

Even then the kill rate is too high to sustain Blues as a species, thanks to females giving birth to 1 calf every three months.

Are you sure about that Jim? That's a mighty short gestation period for a large mammal.

Much as I hate to say it I don't really think Japan and Norway give a toss what any one at the arse end of the world feels.

I still can't make my mind up if whaling is wrong, or whatever, but I sometimes think that people get caught up with the rhetoric of 'conservation' a wee bit. I'll reserve my opinion for the moment, but I'll be buggered if I'll advocate blowing up any one because I don't agree with their views.

[James Deuce]

Gahh - read the post again folks.

I started typing 36 months and then realised how few kiwibikers would be able to covert 36 months to three years.

Then hit submit too quickly.

[terbang]

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?

Umm Err but we don't farm Whales do we and the whale numbers are dangerously down..Its not the killing thats the problem its the extinction that is..

[James Deuce]

Are you sure about that Jim? That's a mighty short gestation period for a large mammal.

Bear in mind that a Blue Whale foetus grows at a rate 20 times greater than a human foetus. Gestation is 10-12 months.

The 36 month thing is an estimate. No one appears to have a definitve answer to how many times an adult female Blue will reproduce during its lifespan. Mostly because we've been killing them too quickly to make corsets and candles to be able learn how the Blue Whale life cycle works.

As for the Rhetoric of conservation, whale numbers are estimated on the number of whales logged as killed during the period of industrial processing of whales, and the number of distinct individuals catalogued during migrations. Blues are so few in number that descriptions of individuals become more detailed as each year goes buy. Numbers estimates range from 800-1800 - not very accurate I know, but both numbers are tiny compared to the 100,000 Blues killed from the early 19th century to the latter third of the 20th century. There will have been many more kills than that that weren;t documented.

[Lou Girardin]

Shame... you guys must know some really skanky women if they smell like fish... pick them up on K Rd did you?

It always reminded me of the seaside more than fish.
But they do say that the most difficult part of a sex change is inserting the anchovies.

[placidfemme]

But they do say that the most difficult part of a sex change is inserting the anchovies.

haha I'm gonna use that with some queens I know... oh they'll be right shitty with me

[PuppetMaster]

I think we should hunt and eat Japanese people. I wonder if we could juice them and use them to make our cars run.....how oily are japanese people ?

[placidfemme]

I think we should hunt and eat Japanese people. I wonder if we could juice them and use them to make our cars run.....how oily are japanese people ?

hey with that attitude they're not going to "luv you long time"

[Phurrball]

Hmmm, interesting thread with some reasoned debate (*shock!* *horror!*).

It all depends on the TYPE of issue you view whaling as. Deciding what sort of issue whaling is, is a determanitive factor in the outcome.

Political and sovereignty issue as advanced by Mr Hitcher, indeed.

Conservation issue, yes indeed.

There was even some skirting around the 'animal rights' issues - this is where it gets interesting IMHO.

All of the other issues philosophically relate to the human perspective. The primary consideration is the human values concerned. Looking at the suffering of the whale being killed is straying into the animal welfare field if you think it's OK to kill whales; or into the animal rights field if you think that whales should be free from predation by humans.

This starts to open the philosophical can of worms that is human treatment of animals in general. There are all sorts of HUMAN justifications as to why it is OK for humans to treat some animals in one way that would not be acceptable if it were a different species.

Taking food from natural stocks in the ocean is extremely ecologically dodgy at the best of times. Whales happen to be more scarce than most other oceanic 'food' species. BUt humans tend to ascribe a 'special' status to whales that we do not to other aquatic animals. Why is that? Surely there is no logical basis for suggesting that whales deserve special protection? Where should we draw the line? Should whales have the 'right' not to be hunted to extinction?

Current regimes governing our relationship with animals we share the planet with are entirely anthrocentric - they protect 'cute, furry animals' that humans like. While the species differ from culture to culture, the tenuous intellectual justifications for distinguishing between species do not.

If whales are special, in terms of what they think and feel, surely other animals possess thoughts and emotions we should consider before exploiting them. Such thinking would be a little uncomfortable for most to do more than scratch the surface of the suffering meted out to further human whims. The exception is that suffering which is meted out to 'cute and furry' animals (and is hence unacceptable).

Humans should be looking to throttle back our dependance on animal exploitation per se, whales are just an interesting example of an animal humans feel a special affinity with.

Animal rights rant over, normal hippy-bashing may resume.