Whaling

There are a few key points in this subject. Firstly, whaling is not illegal in international waters or domestic waters of a whaling nation. Japan's controversial research program, while disliked by many, is by no means illegal. It is not even prohibited by the IWC, which is not a lawmaking body. Their commercial whaling moratorium is entirely voluntary. Any country that doesn't want to listen to the IWC is under no obligation to. The killing of whales is not exceptionally inhumane. Unlike in the "golden age of whaling" in the 19th century, whales are no longer hunted by developed nations with hand-thrown harpoons and spears, which could take hours or even days to kill a single whale. Norway, Iceland, and Japan, the top three whaling nations of the modern world, utilize harpoon guns, which shoot a heavy steel harpoon with an exploding grenade at the tip of it. When aimed correctly, these kill or render unconscious the whale within seconds, and generally under one or two minutes. It is the equivalent or shorter time to death as any big game animal shot with a rifle on land. Norway has the best record for humane kills, with 80% of whales shot dying within a minute or so. This shows that whaling can be humane, and we must work to make it entirely so. One must also not overlook how in a slaughterhouse, animals sometimes do not die immediately, and due to the atrocious factory style abattoirs' need to process hundreds or thousands of animals, sometimes go through extreme amounts of pain before expiring. Whaling is sustainable. One cannot say that all whales are endangered, because this is simply not true. Yes, some whales like the blue whale or right whale are currently endangered and protected from hunting. But the most hunted species of whale is the Minke whale. Its world populations are estimated at 800,000, with only one or two thousand being taken per year. The species is currently growing in population in fact, due to the small quotas for hunting them. Iceland and Japan, however, continue to hunt the endangered Fin whale. Despite very small quotas, less than two hundred per year worldwide, I believe that this species is still to fragile to support hunting. Whaling is not unethical. People like to say that whales are unique, intelligent, and human-like, and thus should not be killed. Every species is unique and many have human-like social structures, yet we kill plenty of them. Pigs are also very intelligent, yet we slaughter them. To designate whales as different is completely arbitrary. Of course, these arguments only hold if my opponent accepts the killing of other types of animals for human consumption. If she does not find it acceptable, I can only say that animals kill others for food. If humans evolved not to eat meat, we would not be adept at digesting it, our teeth would not be shaped for eating it, and we would not find it to taste good. Yet we do, and thus I believe we evolved as omnivores. Sustainable hunting of whales is actually better for the environment than commercial livestock farming. It yields no methane, no toxic solid waste, and whales do not take up human living space. Whale meat is not necessarily mercury-laden as some would have you believe. The meat of toothed whales, such as sperm whales and pilot whales/dolphins is unfortunately, heavily contaminated. This is because for each step in the food chain, poisons present in the bottom of it are concentrated significantly. At the top of the chain are these toothed whales, and thus they contain potentially hazardous levels of mercury. But this does not apply to baleen whales, such as Minke whales and Fin whales. They eat only plankton and krill, the bottom of the food chain. This means they are at its same level as small fish. And therefore, they do not contain as high concentrations of mercury.