by PLAYER57832 on Fri Jan 04, 2013 6:11 pm
jimboston wrote:CreepersWiener wrote:Why? Any particular reason? I would think if we ocean farmed whales we could feed a lot more people in the world than raising cattle. Cattle produce so much methane that they are screwing the Ozone Layer! When whales shit and fart, it just goes "Blub, Blub, Blub, Blub...and then the ocean cleans it up and little fishies eat all the whale poop!
We could also produce lots of oil from whale blubber! Diesel prices could be brought down and it would be a totally new renewable energy resource!
I think the problem stems from the fact that we have "over-fished" whales and many were threatened with extinction.
So the "fix" is to stop hunting them all together.
That makes sense when they are near extinction... but as the population rebonds fishing them and managing the population may make more sense.
At what point that makes sense is a question for experts, and likely debatable.
I do think also the methods used in the past may have been considered "cruel" by some. Perhaps with better technology we coudl find more "humane" ways to kill them.
From a fisheries perspective, whales just don't reproduce enough to sustain a heavily impacted population. This is why though most whaling ended decades, even centuries ago in some cases, the population numbers are still low.
Also, the primary demand was for whale oil, not whale meat. Petroleum products have long since replaced almost all whale oil uses, thus lowering the demand.
Per management, they are managed, as much as any marine species is managed... that is, a few international treaties are enforced, but a lot is left up to various countries. Teh distance a country can "control" off its shores varies, but is dictated by international law.
Of course, any international law is by its nature weaker than more localized laws. Japan and Norway have used a scientific fishing exclusion to justify some small scale whaling, which is largely what Greenpeace, etc target. Ironically, the US is one country that has not (unless this changed in the past few years) signed onto the international bans on whaling, largely because they want to maintain the right of the Inuit to whale.