Defend ecology and economy from needless whale hunt 
The Universe
(July 02, 2006)
There was once a time when the only way beggars in New York could get a handout was to dress up in a whale costume. That's how the joke went anyway.
The media exposed the hunting of whales with deadly harpoons and shocked the world. It showed the wholesale bloody slaughter of the magnificent creatures by the whaling nations - Japan, Iceland and Norway.
Now, our TV screens are again showing the cruel and painful death of these great mammals. God gave us custody of the earth, to be protectors of creation and have respect for all living creatures. We have made a terrible mess of it and are destroying not only the creatures but the very oceans, forests and mountains that provide them with their habitat. Yes we are wiping out species day by day.
Humans are the greatest killers since the age of the Dinosaurs when Tyrannosaurus Rex ruled with huge jaws and a veracious appetite. That's us - consuming all before us until we have killed everything and stupidly wiped out our own sources of livelihood.
A ban was imposed by the international whaling commission 20 years ago and has held until now. Japan has been able to get many tiny nations to join the commission, suspiciously increasing aid to these nations in the process, and perhaps increasing it further when they voted with Japan for the statement saying the ban should be lifted.
This alone would not lift the ban - that would take 75 per cent of the vote, but it could be the start down a slippery slope if Japan gets more tiny nations to vote its way.
Despite that ban 20 years ago, Japan was able to get a special permit to slaughter hundreds of whales every year for so called ‘scientific’ research. None of it is truly scientific. The whale meat is sold off in Japanese fish markets.
The awful contradiction is that most Japanese prefer watching whales than eating them. One third of the whale meat is made into pet food - imagine little household pets feasting on the great giants of the oceans.
It is those oceans that we are ravaging. Last June 8 was World Ocean Day, but you would never think we even cared about what is happening in the vast deep, as the relentless pursuit of profit and exotic foods has wiped out 90 per cent of the biggest fish and 70 per cent of the world’s coastal fishing stocks.
Philippine and Asian coastal fishermen whose family depends on the daily catch have to venture out to the ocean in flimsy canoes to catch anything.
Hundreds of fishing trawlers from as many as twenty nations use huge drag nets to scour the ocean’s floors day and night catching everything that swims into their path; dolphins, tortoise even sea birds are caught and die. The nets are destroying everything in their path and lift up five tons of ocean life in each scoop.
These relentless trawlers and ocean hunters select a few choice specimens and throw back the rest into a now increasingly lifeless void. It has to stop and we must do what we can to help. Marine conservation is a challenge for us all, as defenders of life we have to save the life of the planet - we depend on it to live, how could we forget that? [End]
