My new hero: Hideki Moronuki

@Eric TF Bat: I don’t know enough about the ecology of whales to know whether the claim of “sustainable” is right or wrong. But as for Moronuki, well, he’s the whaling commissioner — it’s his job to promote Japan’s cause. Though I suspect his words were written by a good PR firm.

Agreed about the piracy of Sea Shepherd. “Taking the law into your own hands,” charging about like yahoos and endangering the lives of yourselves and others in remote, dangerous waters is fuckwittedness of the first water.

@Alastair: Ta for that link. More for me to read…

@Cassie ST: I thought the whole point was than the Japanese whaling is within IWC rules? Apart from their justification of “scientific”, perhaps, but doesn’t the burden of proof fall on the prosecutors to demonstrate that it’s not being scientific?

[Note to the hard of thinking: This is called the devil's advocate technique, and does not necessarily indicate that I support any particular position which you might imagine hold by inference or assumption from what I ask.]

On the other hand, we’ll have to agree to disagree about Sea Shepherd. A RAN submarine is one thing — a vessel belonging to a legally-constituted navy acting under the valid orders of a constitutional government. But a bunch of vigilantes with an adrenalin addiction boarding a ship on the high seas and interfering with its operation — and sometimes even sinking them — is nothing but piracy.

As Eric TF Bat said, they should have been locked up, not returned to the Steve Irwin.

It’s appropriate that Sea Shepherd’s ship is called the Steve Irwin: they’re both loud, attention-seeking wankers who get far more media oxygen than their importance warrants.

@Cassie ST: I’m genuinely angry about Sea Shepherd’s piracy. When Oceanic Viking collected their boarding team (Benjamin Potts and Giles Lane) from the Yushim Maru No 2 they should have been detained pending charges being laid, not returned to the Steve Irwin.

Wikipedia discusses the problems with the International Whaling Commission — which was founded in 1946 to protect whale stocks for hunting, as it happens. It was only in the 1970s that its focus turned to conserving whales for the whales’ sake.

Now hunting and killing whales is not a pretty business. But neither is hunting kangaroos, goats, tuna, octopus… Even farm animals meet a messy end. I didn’t exactly enjoy the first time I chopped off a chicken’s head when I was about 8 years old — and since I was a kid and not skilled with the tomahawk it was a very messy end indeed! But I still had chicken for dinner that night.

If whales can be hunted sustainably — I’m not saying they can be, there’s an “if” there — but if they can be, then I really don’t see the difference between hunting them or any other critter that walks, swims, flies, wriggles or crawls. It’s all a matter of taste. Westerners don’t eat dog; others are not so fussed.

Now the IWC faces legal problems enforcing its rulings because, as Wikipedia explains:

First, the IWC is not based on international treaty, and therefore, any member countries are free to simply leave the organisation and declare themselves not to be bound by it if they so wish. Second, the IWC’s power to “legislate” a moratorium or quotas is very restricted, because any member state may opt out of a quota or moratorium simply by objecting to it. Third, the IWC has no authority or means to enforce any quotas, even on states that voluntarily put themselves under them.

In brief, the IWC is a talk-fest where anyone who’s a member can just say “Screw you!” Which is basically what Japan has done.

As for the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, it’s not actually in Australian territorial waters. It’s in waters off Australia’s Antarctic Territory. Now Australian courts have asserted that we have the right to stop the Japanese actions there. Whether that’s actually enforceable under international law, particularly the Antarctic Treaty System, is another question.

This one will run and run…

Personally, I like whales. It’d be a shame for them to disappear. I think there’s probably other, yummier things we can eat. But the legal grounds for stopping Japan from doing what it’s doing are much, much shakier than the zealots of Greenpeace and the pirates of Sea Shepherd make out.

I’m finally catching up on comments from last week. The Heath Ledger Experiment was overwhelming! OK, so let’s try and unravel the threads… Here’s my list of the arguments being proposed.

1. “Whales are endangered, so we should not hunt them.” Some whale species are endangered, others not. If a species is not under threat, should it not be huntable? Or is hunting itself the objection? Would farming be OK? (Don’t ask me how big a whale farm would be! Battery-farming is a option then, I guess.)
2. “Japan’s whale hunters are breaking the law.” Questionable, given the information in my previous comment.
3. “The ‘research’ being done by Japanese whalers isn’t ‘proper’ research.” Currently (on this website at least) that’s an assertion without evidence. More information please.
4. “Hunting whales is cruel and ugly.” Yep, and so is hunting kangaroo, goat, crocodile… The only difference is that we don’t have Greenpeace showing us pictures of a roo hunt every second weekend. Cluster-bombing Iraqi army recruits wasn’t pretty either.
5. “Japan already has more whale meat than they need.” Then they’re idiots, or have some other agenda for propping up an uneconomic industry. Any suggestions?

Have I covered all the bases?

@Fnord Prefect: You ask: “Come on, do we really have to hunt everything to extinction just because we can?” Who’s talking about hunting being “to extinction”? Straw man. Already crossed that off the list. So if that’s the objection, we’re in “furious agreement”.

@bob moreno: I think you’ll find that Steve Irwin himself was somewhat dead at the time. The MV Steve Irwin was originally the Robert Hunter, but re-christened on 5 December 2007 — well after Irwin’s death on 4 September 2006.

Finger-pointing should presumably be directed at his widow who seems quite happy to have family members exploited for profit, dead or alive. A pity she doesn’t grant them the same sanctity as the whales.