Whale and Tuna (1)

Look at that picture! The meat looks very fresh, and it must be delicious if you eat it raw. I'm drooling, but the dish at the restaurant cost 40 bucks. Unbelievable!

Recently I have found an article reporting DNA tests showing Japan's illegal hunting of humpback whales. The endangered species must be protected or conserved. Feel free to prosecute Japan if they violate the international law. But as long as Japan keeps hunting annually 50 humpback whales, the species is sustainable, and this is what we want. We are in a sense the most caring people about the number of whales because if a species becomes extinct, we can't eat them anymore.

Some other species, minke whales for instance, have gained their population (not acknowledged by IWC, but abundant), and it's reasonable to catch them, keeping them sustainable. What's wrong about that? Those whales, the predators of small marine wildlife, can't get too much larger in population because they may conversely endanger those wildlife such as sardines. Minke whales are sometimes referred to "sea mice" because of their fertility. The drawback of whale fundamentalist is that they don't care about the total food chain. Overpopulated minke whales will end up cornering blue whales due to scrambling krill they feed on. A study has revealed that the comsumption of marine wildlife by total whales outweighs that by human beings by a factor of 3~5.(Sorry, I don't have the source of this information.) Some Japanese researchers have been investigating this food chain and showed the data, but protesters are not willing to be scientific, making creepy screams like greenpeace. Let's just think about the whole ecosystem and stop biased blanket protection.

What I am very afraid of is the doubt you'd bear about Japanese sincerity like: "Japan is a huge fish consumer and they feel nothing about making many spicies extinct. Japan keep eating world's resources for free!"

Do you know southern bluefin tuna? It's also endangered, and the comission for the conservation of bluefin tuna was founded among Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, and the organization began to apply strict quotas to their fishing fleets from 1985. The principal non member nations were Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia. Korea and Taiwan finally joined the commission in 2001 and 2002 after repeated requests. Indonesia is still the one which is reluctant. The case of southern bluefin tuna is just one example, but nowadays Japan is a leading country with a great awareness about sea resources! It seems to me that some other countries are just focused on whales as a symbol of sea resources, but you'd have to think about the entire food chain. The amount of hunting of anchovy is getting less year by year. What do you know about sea creatures except whales? Since we eat so many kinds of fish that we are very sensitive. Think about Tuna and anchovy as well. If small fish become extinct, whales become in danger and you know why. Keeping a good proportion in marinal food chain is of great importance.

Lots of interesting news there, like this:
http://www.oprt.or.jp/eng/e_news_060105.html
"A DNA test conducted by Japanese Fisheries Agency on the 148 tons tuna caught and exported to Japan last Novemeber as Pacific big-eye tuna by a Chinese tuna longliner revealed the false report on the origin. The fish were from the Atlantic,not the Pacific. Japan urged China to investigate the case and also temporalily banned the import of tuna from the vessel.Tighter regulations for Atlantic big-eye tuna have been impopsed than the Pacific."

Seems like it's better to supervise those outlaws.


I created a Q and A section below about whale hunting.

Q1. What kind of whales became extinct?
A1. No whales have ever been hunted to extinction.

Q2. Aren't whales supposed to have a high level of intelligence?
A2. Then why don't you think about protecting crows? They are clever.

Q3. Why isn't your heart hurt seeing cute whales being killed?
A3. Why isn't your heart hurt seeing cute chicken being killed?

Q4. Pro-whaling nations often argue that whales should be culled to protect fish stocks. That's like blaming woodpeckers for deforestation.
A4. Well, why don't you disprove our scientific data with statistics. Don't be emotional.

Q5. Japanese people should be more democratic and listen to our argument.
A5. Yeah, we do. Japanese mass media neutrarily report this, and because of this, 15 % people protest whaling, and 30% think Japan can give in for avoiding international friction. Looks like UK is not a democratic country, excluding neutral way of thinking because thier journalism is already biased:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5093350.stm
Why don't you allow the other opinion to exist in your country? Or BBC is just shortsighted anti-Japanese. I hate BBC ever.

Q6. Do you eat dogs, too, right? I saw a TV program about that. Asian are just cruel.
A6. That's Korean. We are Japanese. Can't you distinguish even this?

Q7. The big problem for me is that Japan doesn't have any need to hunt whales. They have a massive surplus of whale meat from their "research" hunting already, nobody really wants to eat it. It's all about petty nationalism and politics.
A7. You're right even though this is not a question. It's all about petty Anglo-Saxon's nationalism and politics. Reding newspapers from both sides, Anglo-saxon's papers tend to lose their control on emotion while Japan's ones stick to neutrality. So, you know which one is more barbaric; it's the reaction of Anglo-Saxon. I recommend that you doubt your irrational mass media.

Q8. What remains a mystery is why Japan is so obsessed with the resumption of whaling.
A8. What remains a mystery is why Australia is so obsessed with the ban of whaling.

Q9. But your country feed dogs with whale meat, right?
A.9 That is what they call propaganda. Propaganda is usually accompanied with exaggeration, making a teeny aspect look very serious. There's only one company manufacturing dog food from whale meat, and I have never seen their products neighborhood. Since making dog food from whale meat is not bannd by IWC, there's nothing we can do about it and this is what the company can decide. If there was a murder in Iraq by a UK's soldier, do you like newspapers to write "The fact: UK's troop kill Iraqi"?
Read this, and I'm sure you are going to be caved about the brainwashing process by biased mass media :
http://whaling-faq.blogspot.com/2006/05/faq-3.html
This is a website run by a NewZealander, and his discussion is very refined.

Wanna see Whale and Tuna (2)?
http://yellowpeep.blogspot.com/2006/06/whale-and-tuna-2.html