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The Forum > Article Comments > Whaling > Comments

Whaling : Comments

By David Leyonhjelm, published 13/1/2016

Those who dislike whaling have every right to avoid whale products, to hold whalers in disdain, and to urge others to do the same. But they should not be free to force others to stop whaling.

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Agree one hundred per cent. I would add that hysterical ideology and attitudes affect both sides of this debate.

Conservation arguments for banning whale hunting no longer hold up because whale numbers for hunted species are managing to increase healthily in the face of very modest levels of whaling.

Whaling for "scientific" purposes is only a pretext. All the Japs want is to run a modest commercial harvest. They have strong traditions of whale-meat consumption and don't want to be dictated to.

Consumption of whale meat is destined to die a natural death anyway because it is well documented that whale meat contains dangerous levels of mercury. Even with the existing limited catch, Japanese whalers have difficulty selling what they catch.
Posted by Bren, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 8:32:04 AM
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Whales, elephants, rhinos, is there no limit on which animals we exterminate for the most basic reasons, the mighty dollar and its acquisition by the most base means?

While one is speaking as an experienced shooter/hunter whose considerable skill was reserved for ferals and others breeding up into plague proportions, and as a consequence unless humanely culled would see vast numbers literally starve to death.

Even so there is simply no cogent case for whale hunting, we have superior oil in the desert jojo plant and the meat is vastly inferior to beef.

I can think of nothing worse than to see a female indiscriminately killed leaving her calf to starve.

There is simply no cogent case for barbaric whaling. Why even in the cold north, animal protein sources can be farmed undercover.

If these animals were in plague proportions, maybe?

But like the American buffalo and baby seals, routinely slaughtered for things not related to food per se. But thoroughly outdated custom or so called trophies.

When I killed, David, it was to cull over population or eliminate ferals and wherever possible, with a single clean head shot.

I always had a use for the carcass, food for the table or the kennel.

There's no pleasure in killing and no understanding the dubious mentality of those who kill for sport/thrill/pleasure. The only fish I throw back, are too rank for the table or undersize.

I think we could replace whale meat in all the countries that still hunt these animals with our locally produced wagyu.

A win/win all round!

I ask you, who in Japan or anywhere, prefers aged whale meat to fresh wagyu or venison? The majority prefer hamburgers!

To reiterate there is no cogent case on any grounds for this barbaric custom and indeed the other favorite, dolphin massacres!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 8:41:18 AM
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Opposition to whaling is just another Left, feel-good, useless pieces of grandstanding - as the Japanese continue to show us. The anti-whalers are just making fools of themselves, as are gormless Australian politicians unable to do the real jobs we pay them to do.
Posted by ttbn, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 9:01:57 AM
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In terms of damage done to our only life support system, this planet, we are much better off culling humans rather than Whales.
Posted by ateday, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 9:42:40 AM
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Bren, you need to get your facts right the Japanese do not have a long tradition of eating Whale. They started eating Whale because their fish stocks were very depleted.
The Japanese have shown over and over that they are unable to follow sustainable fishing practices.Take a look how they cheat in the Tuna industry.

ttBn more mindless posting from the car park attendant. Conservation of animals is actual a invention of conservatives,and now pushed by both sides. But then you never do let facts get in the way of your posts.

To the Author who is clearly just taking his ideological approach to this and hasn't actually thought about it to hard.

David how do we determine what a sustainable catch is?
How do we divide that up?
Has David reviewed how well Japan adheres to the Tuna wild catch limits to determine their likely behavior in any sustainable Whale industry?

I personally have not got an issue with any taking any wild animals for food or other purposes. As long as it is done in a sustainable manner and the animal is killed humanly.

Its the killing of whales that I have my biggest opposition. Current practices are cruel in in human.

lastly Whale isn't actually that popular in Japan and if the government stopped funding the industry it would most likely cease altogether.

Surely David should be more interested in Japans closed markets then their right to harvest whales in the southern ocean. After all haven't he been elected by the good people of NSW to represent their interests in the Australian federal parliament?
Posted by Cobber the hound, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 10:19:21 AM
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The fact that Whaling has been part of a culture does not make it right or good.
Cannibalism and human sacrifices were also part of some cultures.
Posted by ateday, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 10:31:09 AM
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Yo ateday

be a cannibal today cousy bro. Are you discriminating against indigenous eating habits?

A bit like WHITE British woman chewing their placentas http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/11012491/Meet-the-mothers-who-eat-their-placentas.html Yummy!

Land rights for gay whales, bro.
Posted by plantagenet, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 11:51:22 AM
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I dislike the idea of whaling and would never eat whale meat, but David has a point. If it is sustainably managed, there is no more rational reason to oppose whaling than to oppose harvesting any other sea creatures.

Even if our strong cultural taboo against eating whale suggests that Australians support a ban on killing and eating whales here, we have no right to impose that taboo on others. I have no more right to tell the Japanese not to eat whale than a Muslim has to tell me not to eat pork.
Posted by Rhian, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 2:42:52 PM
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What right do japanese have to fish in other nation's oceans? Or in oceans, where international conventions have banned all seafood harvest.

Yes some whale species are in recovery mode, even so, with such a small gene pool that recovery has to be very tenuous, and discouraged on many grounds for that and other good animal husbandry reasons!

We had a war with much loss of life, in order to keep these folk out of our back yard.

You'd hear the screams all the way from here to Tokyo, if we decided to fish waters they had some legitimate claim to!

In any event, how much sympathy/support can we extend to them, as China seeks to impose some right of ownership over their marine possessions? What's good for the goose is good for the gander!

Even the most hardened hunter rarely takes out a mother with calf or babe at foot, even when culling feral animals.

If science is the go, then simple tissue samples can be easily collected from breaching animals to tell us all we want to know.

The first being how large is the remaining gene pool and how much more harvesting can be tolerated before the pool, not the actual numbers, becomes too small to sustain a healthy diverse population?

We are all aware of the eventual extremely negative implications of continually putting a father to his own daughters, even by accident rather than deliberate design!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 5:04:23 PM
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I love how it's only the Japanese who are the bad guys.

They should just obtain Norwegian citizenship, grow beards, and change their names to Sven and Olaf. Then they could kill as many whales as they liked and nobody would care.
Posted by Toni Lavis, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 9:13:20 PM
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Rhosty, you ask:

“What right do japanese have to fish in other nation's oceans” The answer is none, but as far as I’m aware they have only killed whales in international waters.

If there are genuine scientific reasons to think that whales cannot be harvested sustainably, whether because of genetic diversity or absolute numbers, then the ban on whaling is rationally defensible. But if the issue is discrimination between species on sentimental grounds, or racist antipathy to the Japanese, then it is not.
Posted by Rhian, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 9:25:11 PM
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I don't care much about whaling either way but what I would suggest is that plastic from our consumption waste posses a far greater risk to whales than the Japs catching a few for food.

As for mercury, this is built up in all fish but I was of the opinion that it only becomes a problem to human consumption with older animals and I thought they targeted young ones. Not sure though.

Save the whale and ignore our homeless kids is what I see.
Posted by rehctub, Thursday, 14 January 2016 6:07:20 AM
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We have been told that whales and dolphins are very intelligent creatures, if this is so then they should have no difficulty in avoiding the hunters and no one need worry about them.
Posted by Is Mise, Thursday, 14 January 2016 7:10:17 AM
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There should be only two issues of concern to humanity regarding the hunting of whales. The first is sustainability of the hunt: are the populations of the whale species large enough to sustain hunting? At present, it appears the species being targeted by the Japanese are at no threat of extinction. The second issue relates to the cruelty imposed on the whales being taken: are they being killed humanely? The answer is clearly no: all available film footage shows whales being harpooned and remaining alive and in extreme pain for several to many minutes.

Since whaling cannot be carried out humanely at present, it should not be allowed.

For an intelligent MP whose libertarian values I hold dearly, the lack of focus on the humane killing of whales is a serious oversight.
Posted by Bernie Masters, Tuesday, 19 January 2016 10:05:01 AM
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