Technical Reports of the Institute of Cetacean Research (2018)

pp. 77–78

Commentary
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the views of the Institute ofCetacean Research

Ethics of Whaling: Is whaling truly immoral?
Kayo Ohmagari
Institute of Cetacean Research, Toyomi-cho 4–5, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104–0055, JapanINTRODUCTION
In recent years, the impact of human activities on theenvironment, in particular habitat degradation and destruction, and resource over-exploitation, have been ofincreasing concern which led to a rise of environmentalism. As a result, the relationship between humans, thenatural environment, and other living organisms is being
reconsidered. This has led to examining alternatives to
traditional consumptive use-oriented relationships between humans and nature, as well as moral and ethicalresponsibilities toward future generations.
A part of this debate relates to whaling, where the international community is split primarily along two opposing sides. One view denies the conventional consumptive
use-oriented relationship between humans and whales,
and claims that the only acceptable whale use in the 21stcentury is non-consumptive use, such as whale watching.
According to this view, whales are an international common heritage which must be ʻpreserved,ʼ as opposed toʻconserved,ʼ for future generations. Moreover, whaling
should not be permitted because it is against ethics that
ʻthere are certain cultural norms, like cannibalism, thatare in violation of our basic approach to maintaining ourcivilizationʼ (Wetson cited in Eilperin, 2006).
In contrast, the other view supports the maintenanceof a traditional relationship between humans and whales,
where hunting and dietary use should be allowed as longas such use is sustainable. Since whales are used forfood, the claim that whaling and eating whale products
are immoral/unethical is not acceptable. Solely nonconsumptive use of whales is simply not justiﬁable aslong as resources are abundant. This view acknowledges
traditional usersʼ right to the resource, and opposes antiutilization when it is based strictly on sentiment.
This brief paper attempts to clarify moral/ethical arguments against whaling, their meanings, and if such claim
is indeed justiﬁable.

PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATETo understand the claim that whaling is unethical andimmoral, two philosophical concepts, namely ethics andmorality should be deﬁned and discussed. Singer (2018)
deﬁnes that ʻethics, also called moral philosophy, thediscipline concerned with what is morally good or bad,right or wrong.ʼ Furthermore, he states that ethicʼs ʻmajor
concerns include the nature of ultimate value and thestandards by which human actions can be judged right orwrong.ʼ In other words, ethics or morality implies something of objective and normative value to be accepted by
all people.
However, there is an opposing view, moral relativism,
which argues that such objective or universal morality
does not exist, but is only relative to a group, person, orsociety/culture. This school of thought was largely inﬂuenced by anthropology (Gowans, 2018), such as ʻ…moralvalues are relative to culture and that there is no way ofshowing that the values of one culture are better thanthose of anotherʼ (American Anthropological Association
Executive Board, 1947). Reﬂecting these varied viewson ethics, morality deﬁned by Gert and Gert (2017) ismore comprehensive: ʻ1. descriptively to refer to a codeof conduct put forward by a society or a) some othergroup, such as religion, or b) accepted by an individualfor his/her own behavior or 2. normatively refer to a codeof conduct that, given speciﬁed conditions, would be put
forward by all rational persons.ʼ As there are two opposing views of moral/ethics, the possibility of an objective
morality has become one of the constant themes of ethics (Singer, 2018).

DISCUSSION
When someone claims that whaling is immoral/unethical,
which morals does he/she refers to, universal or speciﬁc
to a society/culture? Universal moral or ethical argument
against whaling is persuasive only if the population orresource cannot be sustainably used, and such use would
lead the species to go extinct, with nothing left for thefuture generations. However, many whale populations
have recovered and a risk averse resource management
tool to ensure calculation of safe quotas, Revised Management Procedure (RMP), has been developed. There77

Technical Reports of the Institute of Cetacean Research (2018)is therefore no sound scientiﬁc basis to oppose whaling
because whales can be sustainably harvested and utilized
for human consumption.
Conservation of biological diversity is a globally sharedconcern and a part of newly emerging normative values,
however, the concern here is the conservation of thestock or species but not the protection of an individual
animal. As long as survival of species is not at risk, themoral argument against whaling is diﬃcult to justify as
it is a matter of animal rights or animal welfare but notconservation.
There are a wide variety of edible plant and animals
around the world, but somehow lines are drawn concerning what to eat or good to eat and ignore the rest as inedible, disgusting or sacred. Some people eat whales whileothers do not. The claim that whaling is immoral basedon the lack of shared food habits is merely a reﬂection ofa speciﬁc value. Nevertheless, provocative words, suchas bloodbath, barbaric and cruel practice, are often used
to criticize whaling and to justify their position againstwhaling.
An attempt to convince the other side by claiming thatits own morality is superior to the othersʼ can be regarded
as ʻethical egoismʼ (Gert and Gert, 2017). Arguments ofimmorality against whaling may be a good example ofthis phenomenon. To be convincing, the claim is often
enforced with an evolutionary twist. Attitudes towards
whales are frequently used as a measurement stick forthe progress of animal rights discourse: liberation fromracism, sexism, and ﬁnally to speciesism (Kalland, 1993).
Compassion for whales is considered by some as anindicator of personal as well as social maturity (Scheffer, 1991) and being considerate to whales has becomea prerequisite for membership in the ʻworld communityʼ
(Fuller, 1991,). In other words, for those arguing against
whaling, advanced civilized society and its citizenry
should exempt whales from the universally accepted
principle of sustainable use because whales are special magniﬁcent creatures, ʻthe humans of the oceanʼ(Gylling-Nielsen, 1987). Thus, personiﬁed whales deserve
certain rights and exemption from dinner tables.

CONCLUSION
Do you perceive whaling as immoral and is this position78

justiﬁable? The word moral/ethic has strong connotations
that such values have to be absolute and universal. However, there is a philosophical debate between normativevs. speciﬁc which is manifested in the whaling debate. On
one hand, those who claim whaling immoral assert theirmorality has evolved to be normative and superior to theothers so that the rest should embrace this norm. On
the other hand, others consider such claim to be invalid
because such position is a mere reﬂection of a speciﬁcvalue only acceptable to certain groups and people, andconsider their argument to be ethical egoism. An answer
to the question whether whaling is immoral or not lies inoneʼs personal belief. Whaling is immoral for some, but it
is not for others.

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