In Norway my relatives eat Whale. In Australia my relatives eat Cow. If we want to get sacred about animals we should be consistent.

A good article that attempts to bring some balance to an overly emotional topic

Cows are not facing extinction. We are...by our own stupidity and thought that if our ancestors raped and pillaged for years (Vikings) it must be "natural" just like "natural" arsenic.

Man has a bad track record of dishonesty and abusing treaties, not to mention Mother and Father Nature. How do you keep them honest.

Should we start shooting koala bears or eating echidna when their numbers pick up? How about platypus stew...as long as they don't spike me with their hind legs. I am sure they are very tasty. We could strangle them to death or use rifle-propelled grenades for the koalas high up in trees..or make it a slow death so we don't bruise the meat. We do the same to fish of all sizes...we shouldn't be squeamish as we are carnivores and even we Anglo's had ancestors who ate whales, mammoths and megalofauna for years.

Now let's go and see what species is in the freezer for tea tonight....no not Dugong burgers again.

Cows are not facing extinction because producers have a vested interest in maintaing numbers.

Do you no who started the IWC. Thats right, the Whaling industry. To protect the industry by ensuring that whale populations remain viable. Of course since then the IWC has been hijacked by other parties.

The Japanese should be forced to donate the catched whales to an African country to relieve hunger.

Then lets see how much enthusiasm is left to continue scientific whaling

A thought about cultural practices:

"Culture" does not stand still in time. Look back and see some bad old habits already left behind by many cultures: cannibalism, slavery, witch-burning, the chatteldom of women.

One day I hope that all peoples of the world will be able to feel well-fed without killing other animals. Meanwhile, let's kill as kindly as possible and without further unbalancing ecological systems.

A decent human future depends on much reducing the human footprint and rehabilitating the ecosystems already unbalanced and impoverished.

If the more powerful human beings don't care about the long term outcomes of their actions, all our descendants will pay the price - not only in lost environmental services and safety, but in internecine human conflict. It has already started. Just look around the world.

It's a pity about human greed. The earth was once a very beautiful place.

Odysseus,
The Greeks were well-known for raping and pillaging, too.

As for "traditional" whaling I have no problem with it as long as it is regulated, and humane, and most importantly, in the case of "primitive" hunters, utilises primitive methods. Dugong hunters in Torres Strait use fast boats and rifles, hence the huge kill in recent years.

The Japanese have no history of eating whale meat, in fact they only started after World War II when that meat was cheap and available. Nordic peoples have a long history of eating whale meat, their land was and remains poor so they lived off the sea.

Aside from the rather inhumane methods used to kill whales, one worry I'd have is species identification. Who is to know what species are really taken? one the whales are slaughtered and chopped up and in the shops, who would know that it wasn't a rare Blue Whale? Would commercial Japanese whalers really care? At least Norwegian whalers target specific species in specific numbers and don't sell the meat.

cash for comment Jennifer Marohasy strikes again.

Kenny, Your comment is very offensive. Nobody has paid me, or asked me, to write about whaling. You fail to recognise that I am motivated by a desire to understand the world around me and I try, through my writing, to get as close as possible to the truth.

Kenny, unable to muster a single logical argument against anything the author said, falls back on childish personal attack. Predictable.

The Minister responsible for garnering a sufficient proportion of votes from the religious enviro-cult (the worshipers of Baal?) has made a suitable offering of emotive posturing, invective and plain old whales-wollop. It was a spectacular show that cost him nothing more than his dignity. But at least he was no longer demonising members of his own community, for a change.

The east coast sperm whale herd increases by 700 per annum, the west coast, the coasts of Africa and Sth America, who knows? The Japanese who have an equally long history of whaling as the Norwegians, want to harvest 50 of them from the ocean that feeds all these migrations.

As a raping and pillaging Greek just back from the Trojan War, I observe that a lot of things we do have no scientific basis. Writing to this Forum is one. For example we don't eat human beings, foetuses, placentas (think of the iron in them) or dogs in our country and koala bears are off limits too although our native brothers may have once.
There is no p value for this. We choose to think as a species on this threatened planet that whales are our brothers (the whale people) and we don't eat them. I eat chooks but not my dog. Chooks deserve to be eaten as this has been decreed by God...The Jews do not eat stuff the French think is good bush tucker and the Vietnamese may eye off your Fido while licking their lips. Whales are cute and make us all feel warm and fuzzy as well as being good for tourists. Their brains are bigger than those of most politicians and journos.
Increasingly, we humble Homo sapiens (means thinking....wise...IQ stuff) see the whale family multiplying in our polluted seas as fellow travellers on planet Earth and not just worthy of a Tokyo sushi train. Boarders in the late Cretaceous...Cetus et Homo...the great brains bound for extinction together..
Now I am going back to look up my favourite recipe for tabby cat as I just saw one go past my window...I think it is Rusty from next door...goes terrific in a tarjine and I can use the pelt for my bedroom. I eat p values and r correlations as appetisers.
Conflict of Interest Statement: My wife wears perfume and my mother's maiden name is Norwegian.

Odysseus - Just when I thought you were totally bitter and twisted, you made me laugh. Maybe you're just way more ironic than I have given credit to you in the past (eg DV thread).

Jennifer - while I am not in favour of whaling (brudders frum da sea) I do believe you have presented a balanced and well reasoned article. Yes, we do need to approach whaling in a calm and reasoned manner. However, the Japanese are not fooling anyone. At least the Norwegians are honest.

Perseus, the Japanese have no history of whale hunting, except on a small scale in their local waters. "A whaling history as long as the Norwegians" is nonsense. They have a long history of chasing dolphins into shallow lagoons and bashing them to death, but whales, not really. The Japanese started eating whales (largely caught by others) after WWII when they had no other meat. The whales had been left alone a bit during the war because the whaling fleet was needed elsewhere or was sunk in enemy actions.

After the war the Russians (who had also not been much of a whaling nation) also got into the act and the savagery really started. It is still not lknown whether Blue Whales, as a species, will survive; there are so few left (in the hundreds). So I don't trust the Japanese (or the Russians, for that matter) to abide by quotas and agreements. Nordic peoples have been sustainably taking whales for centuries, and while I would like them to stop, I can't see it happening. I'd like "primitive" people to stop too but they have their rights. The Inuit have the right to take a handful of Bow Whales (also nearly wiped out as a species) in the Bering Strait every year, if they didn't have an imposed quota they'd probably take many more as they use "non-primitive" methods and artifacts.

Yes, bitter and twisted after that big white whale bit off me leg...plays us in our bitterly cold Qld winters.

We Greeks called some whales, "Right Whales" as they behaved themselves post mortem and floated. They were also just the right size for sushi and Norwegian Osloburgers, and women loved covering themselves in whale vomit as male Vikings found it so alluring...a way to find Mr Right while sporting the latest whalebone corsettes...

Now where is that scrimshaw I was trying to finish. We must preserve the Sperm Whale as they make great scrimshaws and have fantastic spemacetti which Chanel love for their Chanel 5... or is it 19...
What a sexy name for a whale.

Yesterday I received an email from an international whaling expert and delegate to IWC meetings with the following comments on my article:

"Three comments on your on line opinion piece:

1) During this year's meeting of the Scientific Committee there was discussion of the quota for humpback whales taken in the Grenadines. The Scientific Committee agreed that the catch limit of 20 for the period 2003-2007 set by the Commission will not harm the stock which was estimated to number around 10,750 animals in 1992. See page 19 of IWC/57/REP 1 http://www.iwcoffice.org/meetings/reports2005.htm (A new abundance estimate for this stock is expected by 2007 but clearly, the IUCN listing is outdated and incorrect).

2) Your description of the method used by Faroese fishermen to kill pilot whales is outdated and inaccurate. I will send you an updated description of the killing method used and a reference when I am in my office next week.

3) Your comment that "perhaps also the Japanese [and Australian], governments could learn from the reasoned and scientific approach taken by the Norwegians" misses the point that in addition to meeting the four principles of the Norwegian harvesting, the take of whales under the special permits for research issued by the Government of Japan also provides valuable scientific information."

You are missing the point, Jennifer. Maybe whales are just off limits for all time. They should be a protected species. I don't think killing these animals is any better than clear-felling Huon Pines 1200 years old. Why don't we start eating people. There are plenty of us and historical precidents for it...even in our life time.
Now where's my scrimshaw..

Jennifer,
This person sounds like a Japanese, if he thinks the whale take is "scientific". They reckon they're great scientists, killing a huge animal to get its otolith (ear bone) which tells them the animal's age at death. Wow! Just imagine the outcry if the Chinese started killing pandas to get their otoliths to find out how old the animals WERE. There are other methods available which don't kill the animals, but guess what, there's no meat if you don't kill the whale!

So can anyone advise what the annual world wide total of whale deaths from beachings etc is? Surely this would be well in excess of the annual kill. And while the official history of commercial whaling may not register much in relation to Japanese activity prior to WWII, are we really expected to believe that pre-meiji coastal communities that routinely gathered to herd dolphins ashore for food were incapable of making the short intellectual jump to eating the regular pods of beached whales.

Or is it now an article of faith in the green community that whales only beach themselves in countries where they will be met by fawning, self promoting publicity seekers?

Whales aren't stupid. They beach themselves where there are cute Green babes in scuba gear carressing them and lots of TV coverage for the whale lobby. Their brains are much bigger than ours and they have lots of time for thinking as they abhor TV. My dog has similar tactics. The cetaceae should be called Cetus supersapiens a bit like Homo nonsapiens.
If a cow beached itself on your front drive and died of respiratory failure from collapsed lungs would you eat its decaying body? Would you race out with your knife and fork and some horseraddish (??cow raddish). Japanese like fresh flesh; the fresher the flesh the better...a bit like our Dr Zeus...preferably still mooing or whatever whales do. Some Asians like eating monkey brains while the monkey is still alive...cranium cut like a boiled egg while the monkey's head with body attached sits in a hole in the table for a degusting dégustation menu. But I suppose the French tubefeed geese for pâté de fois gras.

Now back to my tripe and onions for breakfast or has Penelope done the devilled kidneys and whale pancreas sause again?

My front yard is not a beach but when farmers manage what must be regarded as the most successful species after Homosapiens, Sheep and cattle, they do take note of the age and health of an animal. Once an animals condition begins to decline due to age they are consigned to the food table. It was ever thus for the "tables" of wolves and other predators.

So how many whales die of old age each year? Do they suffer in the cold? Is it a slow, fearful, and protracted death, a shark bite here, an agonising escape, a brief hope, a gasp followed by a feeding frenzie? It is anthropomorphisim, true, but give me a quick, unsuspecting grenade harpoon any day.

It is essentially the same deal most of us make with our employer. We trade almost half of our awoken lives in exchange for comfort, security and certainty in reproduction. And like farmed animals, our infant mortality is lower, our life is easier and our death is quicker and often sooner than "free range humans".

It would seem that being part of the human food chain and being subject to human proprietorship is the one, absolutely certain path out of the threatened species list.

It's too hard to tell the sex of a whale before it's harpooned, let alone find out its age! The Japanese know afterwards by chopping open the head and finding the otolith (an ear bone) which has rings like a tree. The Japanese manage to kill nursing mothers ( the calves are left to starve) so you want them to shoot just the old tough ones now? No chance.

The capacity to determine the age of whales by purely visual means prior to harvesting would be a very useful field for on-going research. I wonder if the Japanese are working on it?

Since when does honest science have anything to do with pushing political agenda?

Rule number one in politics... distort and discard any information that does not support agenda.

Whales have been embued with a whole romantic nostalgia and its the pinnup boy of so called green politics. They are hardly going to use an ugly looking bug or frog thats on the endangered species list.

Anyway... Save the Rhino

and

there are bigger fish to fry in this world (pun intended).

MORE INFO RECEIVED

Hi Jennifer:
Latest information on the Faroe Islands pilot whale hunt, including killing methods is available at the following web sites.
www.whaling.fo
www.tinganes.fo

Hope this helps