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Japanese Whaling

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Submitted By dardano
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ʺThe World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates that there were approximately 275,000 blue whales before the development of modern whaling in the mid-nineteenth century. By the 1960s, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that the number of blue whales had decreased to between 650 and 2,000.ʺ (Global Issues in Context Online Collection). The number of all whales has been decreasing and the Japanese whalers have been the major cause of the depletion of whales throughout history. The Japanese use whaling for to gather resources like whale meat and oils. I don’t believe that the Japanese should be using whaling for food and resources. First of all, when the whales die off, it greatly affects the ecosystem, in other words, the food chain. Another reason is that the international relations with the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Lastly, whaling does not provide the economic benefits that the Japanese thinks it does. Now let me give you a little background information on whaling.
Whaling has gone on for centuries and it has been a necessity for people all over the world. The IWC does allow tribes like the Eskimos, who have hunted whales traditionally, to continue to hunt whales but they could only be a certain type of whale. Traditionally, there used to be a demand for whale oil as a lubricant for machines but these are synthetic so that means you don’t need to kill the whale you could just make. In 1987, the IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling which means they were banned from killing whales for recreational purposes. During the same year, Japan had set up a scientific whaling program, which was when they killed whales from the Southern Ocean and taking them on board of research vessels. The IWC actually permitted Japan to kill whales for research and they could kill a thousand whales from 1987 to the present. An environmental group called Greenpeace gained great attention in the mid 1970’s for its efforts to stop commercial whaling and other practices. “Typical of the group's efforts was a 1975 mission in which a Greenpeace vessel confronted Soviet whaling vessels off the coast of California, with Greenpeace members steering their inflatable speedboats between the whalers and their targets.ʺ (Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.) This shows they are serious against protecting whales.

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