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Yunhan Jiang

Writing 39C / HCP Draft 1

1/26/2019

Professor Greg McClure

The Giant Gentlemen

Commercial whaling is cruel and inhumane, and it needs to be stopped in future.

In 20th century, people did commercial whaling mostly for their blubber, also their

meat. Years before, blubber could serve in the manufacture of soap, leather, and

cosmetics (Donovan). Blubber was used as wax in candles, and as fuel in lamps.

However, nowadays there are alternatives which take the place of blubber in industrial

usage, and those materials are easier to make. Meanwhile, people in some areas

consume blubber as food, but blubber contains PCBs, also known as polychlorinated

biphenyl. Those carcinogens do harm to human nervous system. If people eat blubber

for years, their immune systems and reproductive systems will also be damaged.

Giving a brief summary, nowadays whaling becomes unnecessary, because the

resources come from whales are no longer irreplaceable. As the society developed,

people already have better choices instead of keeping using blubber or eating whale

meat. Right now neither our daily life nor industries depends on whales, and whaling

should be abandoned.

As whales have huge bodies, there is no humane way to kill a whale quickly at

sea. Whales’ important organs, such as lung and heart, are hiding deeply inside their
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bodies, protected by thick skins and fat. They also contain a large amount of blood, up

to 14,000 pounds (6400kg), and it is also impossible to bleed whales to decrease their

pains. For preventing whales from struggling, people even use harpoons with

grenades in whaling. Nearly every whale dies painfully during the hunting. Moreover,

whaling ships in polar areas often make sounds which are very similar to whales.

Those sounds usually attract whales approaching. Whales identify the ships as

members so they will go closer and give body contacts, so they will be shaved hardly

by the high speed screw propellers. Many whales die because of the damage of their

vertebra and backs. Some lucky survivors carry scary scars in the rest of their life.

(pic from theconversation.com)

(pic from reddit.com)

Whaling activity seriously threats the safety of whales, and do no contribution to

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marine life and environment. Such bloody tradition should be abandoned and

prohibited by every person who contains sympathy.

Commercial whaling contains several problems. People seldom concern about the

health of the species, and keep on hunting whales greedily. Besides, whale’s huge

bodies bring them vitality, and whales cannot die easily. During the process of hunting

and killing, every whale suffers extreme pain. What’s more, when a whale dies, its

corpse will fall to seabed and become a whale fall. A whale fall has the ability to

become an ecosystem to numbers of marine life. Nowadays, a large number of whales

are caught and killed by human on land. Which means less whale falls can be created.

The decrease of whale corpses will finally lead to a decline of life number in abyssal

zone.

Whaling started earlier than people think. In Neolithic Korea, the depiction of

whaling on Bangudae Petroglyphs could be the earliest whaling record, at around

6000 B.C. However, people in pre-history did whaling only for their own food, and it

could be identify as a normal hunting activity. The extend of whaling was small, and

had no ability to affect natural food chain or cause an extinguish. However, as the

society grew, whaling technique was strongly developed in the 19th century because of

the demand of whale oil in industry using. And whale meat began to be addicted by

society in the early 20th century (Wikipedia, Whaling). By the late 1930s, more than

fifty thousand whales were killed annually. Industry holders tasted the huge profit by

trading whale products, so they kept expanding the scale of whaling business. No one

concerned about the decreasing population of whales, especially minke whale,

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belugas, narwhals and pilot whales. Up to 2,900,000 (2.9 million) whales were killed

in the 20th century because of the industrial revolution. Therefore, the International

Whaling Commission prohibited commercial whaling at around 1986 because of the

extreme depletion in an amount of many whale species. According to a research from

IWC, only aboriginal whaling was allowed, which would not affect on their profit.

Although whaling activity started to be controlled, there were countries which did not

apply for the decision, especially European countries, such as Iceland and Norway. In

Asia, Japan always known as the biggest whaling country. Around forty thousand of

whales were killed by Iceland, Norway and Japan since 1986.

Several evidence to show that whaling activity is still in progress, although they

are under the controlling of IWC. Japan announced to leave IWC at the end of June,

2018, and resumed commercial whaling in July. “Japan has been hunting whales for

the past thirty years under a scientific programme. Critics say the practice is a cover

for what actually amounts to commercial whaling” (BBC, Japan Whale Hunting).

Junko Sakuma used to work for Greenpeace in Japan. For the last 10 years she has

been researching Japan's whaling industry. "There is no benefit to Japan from

whaling...but nobody knows how to quit," she takes an interview at Tokyo's famously

chaotic Tsukiji fish market, the biggest in the world renowned for its pre-dawn tuna

auctions. If there is a whale meat shortage, the price should be soaring. But according

to Junko it is not. "The fact is, most Japanese people do not eat whale meat," she says.
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"Consumption has been falling for years," and adds that "even as the amount of whale

meat decreases, the price doesn't go up". According to Junko's research, the average

consumption of whale meat by Japanese people in 2015 was just 30g (one ounce) per

person. (BBC, Japan and the whale)

Norway and Iceland keep the activity of whaling every year. Iceland was once

dissatisfied about the IWC and left the IWC in 1991. Although Iceland rejoined IWC

in 2002, it did not obey the rule. Government issued permission of whaling at 2003,

and Iceland resumed commercial whaling in 2006. Public support for whaling has

plummeted in Iceland. A 2018 survey found that 34 per cent of the population

actively oppose it (compared to 18 per cent in 2013). Opposition has extended to

Iceland’s parliament, with a number of MPs calling for a review of the reputational

impact of Iceland’s whaling policy on key sectors such as tourism, and to assess the

economic contribution of whaling compared to other sectors. The review is underway

(EIA, Commercial Whaling).

In another word, whaling has already become a part of economic cycle in many

countries. It is unrealistic to ban whaling in short term.

The problem of whaling must be addressed soon. Nowadays most of whale stocks

are in extremely depletion. What’s more, the process of killing a whale is inhumane.

Whales do several contributions to oceans. The famous scene must be “whale pump”,

which is the action whales do to breath. During the process, nutrients such as nitrogen
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and iron inside whales are pumped out to surface of oceans. Such activity enhances

marine productivity and enriches the number of species on top of oceans, and even

provide foods for sea birds. When gray and humback whales feed themselves at the

bottom of oceans, they disturb the soils and dig out substantial sediment. Such

sediments provide nourishment to fish.

An important contribution from whales to the oceans is called whale fall. When a

whale dies, the story has just begun. The massive carcass sinks to the seafloor, where

it provides food for a deep sea ecosystem on the otherwise mostly barren seafloor

(Smithsonian Ocean, Life After Whale). A well-made video about how a whale fall is

made and what tremendous contribution does a whale fall provide to the deep ocean

ecosystem:

https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/marine-mammals/life-after-whale-whale-falls

The style of the video is also easy to be achieved by kids, and can be a good source of

animal protecting education.

If the problem continues, many kinds of whales will face a threaten of extinguish,

such as minke whale, belugas, narwhals, pilot whales. The amount of deep sea

creatures will also be decreased because of the loosing of whale falls. There are

already uncountable species of animals extinguished because of human hunting

activities, we have no right to create more loose on Earth.

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Work Cited

Donovan, Greg (2008).

"Whaling". Microsoft Encarta.

Wikipedia. Whaling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling#Ongoing_debate

Rendell, Luke. “Could This Be One Reason Why Whale Populations Have Not

Recovered Following Hunt Ban?” The Conversation, The Conversation, 25 July

2014,

theconversation.com/could-this-be-one-reason-why-whale-populations-have-not-r

ecovered-following-hunt-ban-29621.

“r/WTF - Whale Scarred from Boat Propeller.” Reddit, 30 Jan. 2016,

www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/31xma6/whale_scarred_from_boat_propeller/

“Japan Whale Hunting: Commercial Whaling to Restart in July.” BBC News, BBC, 26

Dec. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46682976.

Wingfield-Hayes, Rupert. “Japan and the Whale.” BBC News, BBC, 8 Feb. 2016,
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www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35397749.

“Smithsonian Ocean.” Ocean Portal | Smithsonian, Smithsonian's National Museum

of Natural History, 22 May 2018,

ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/marine-mammals/life-after-whale-whale-falls.

“Commercial Whaling: Unsustainable, Inhumane, Unnecessary.”

EIA International, eia-international.org/reports-mm/keeptheban/