@msolga,
Its obvious that many of us see this issue from two opposing views. Since I respect the boundaries of the several whale sanctuaries, I feel that it is the Japanese who are violating an agreed upon international directive with as much weight as can be mustered in such agreements.
@msolga,
Quote:What exactly ARE the benefits of a return to commercial whaling?
A supply of readily available protein that they are rightfully entitled to harvest as they wish. International waters are international waters.
@JTT,
thats a particularly selfish way of looking at it.
I suppose that you dont much buy the "small footprint on the worlds resources "bullshit either?
@farmerman,
This isn't about me, FM, or you, but you've asked. My footprint wouldn't be visible with an electron microscope.
Again, it's the damned hypocrisy. You rail against others when it is the USA that is the world leader in profligate behavior.
America can always get all holier than thou when they no longer need a resource but up 'til that point they'll grab all they can.
Had any prawns lately?
@JTT,
With that kind of defeatist argument we might as well just get on with the extinction. Its gotta start somewhere. What we on these boards do all the time is take an idea whose time has come and try to rationalize the counterpoint by some cultural irrelevancy. SO wat if the US is a nasty example? Are we not allowed to recognize our shortcomings and by doing so, affect universal changes?
The US was the world leader in the manufacture of cigarrettes. Then we started the campaign that led to the decline in use of cigarrettes so now we are only the world leader in mkanufacture AND EXPORT of cigarrettes.
Many folks recognize this dichotomy and want to try to affect broader changes in world health and habits. Gotta start somewhere. SO, I kind a reject your counterpoint attempt at an argument.
@farmerman,
Quote:SO wat if the US is a nasty example? Are we not allowed to recognize our shortcomings and by doing so, affect universal changes?
That's the problem right there, FM. You never point out the shortcomings of the US but you're front and center pointing fingers at everyone else.
Am I not accurate in this assessment? I think so; "I kind a reject ..."
Sustainable harvest, that's what's needed for all species that the people of the world eat. With what western nations, including Japan are doing to third world subsistence
fisherpeople is horrendous.
Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jun 24, 7:35 pm ET
AGADIR, Morocco – Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.
A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.
"These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean," said biologist Roger Payne, founder and president of Ocean Alliance, the research and conservation group that produced the report.
The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the whales. Fish high in mercury such as shark and swordfish — the types health experts warn children and pregnant women to avoid — typically have levels of about 1 part per million.
The whales studied averaged 2.4 parts of mercury per million, but the report's authors said their internal organs probably had much higher levels than the skin samples contained.
"The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings," Payne said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.
Payne said sperm whales, which occupy the top of the food chain, absorb the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses her calf. "What she's actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby," he said, and each generation passes on more to the next.
Ultimately, he said, the contaminants could jeopardize seafood, a primary source of animal protein for 1 billion people.
"You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species. I suspect this will shorten lives, if it turns out that this is what's going on," he said.
Payne called his group's $5 million project the most comprehensive report ever done on ocean pollutants.
U.S. Whaling Commissioner Monica Medina informed the 88 member nations of the whaling commission of the report and urged the commission to conduct further research.
The report "is right on target" for raising issues critical to humans as well as whales, Medina told The Associated Press. "We need to know much more about these problems."
Payne, 75, is best known for his 1968 discovery and recordings of songs by humpback whales, and for finding that some whale species can communicate with each other over thousands of miles.
The 93-foot Odyssey, a sail-and-motor ketch, set out in March 2000 from San Diego to document the oceans' health, collecting pencil-eraser-sized samples using a dart gun that barely made the whales flinch.
After more than five years and 87,000 miles, samples had been taken from 955 whales. The samples were sent for analysis to marine toxicologist John Wise at the University of Southern Maine. DNA was compared to ensure the animals were not tested more than once.
Payne said the original objective of the voyage was to measure chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants, and the study of metals was an afterthought.
The researchers were stunned with the results. "That's where the shocking, sort of jaw-dropping concentrations exist," Payne said.
Though it was impossible to know where the whales had been, Payne said the contamination was embedded in the blubber of males formed in the frigid polar regions, indicating that the animals had ingested the metals far from where they were emitted.
"When you're working with a synthetic chemical which never existed in nature before and you find it in a whale which came from the Arctic or Antarctic, it tells you that was made by people and it got into the whale," he said.
How that happened is unclear, but the contaminants likely were carried by wind or ocean currents, or were eaten by the sperm whales' prey.
Sperm whales are toothed whales that eat all kinds of fish, even sharks. Dozens have been taken by whaling ships in the past decade. Most of the whales hunted by the whaling countries of Japan, Norway and Iceland are minke whales, which are baleen whales that feed largely on tiny krill.
Chromium, an industrial pollutant that causes cancer in humans, was found in all but two of the 361 sperm whale samples that were tested for it. Those findings were published last year in the scientific journal Chemosphere.
"The biggest surprise was chromium," Payne said. "That's an absolute shocker. Nobody was even looking for it."
The corrosion-resistant metal is used in stainless steel, paints, dyes and the tanning of leather. It can cause lung cancer in people who work in industries where it is commonly used, and was the focus of the California environmental lawsuit that gained fame in the movie "Erin Brockovich."
It was impossible to say from the samples whether any of the whales suffered diseases, but Wise found that the concentration of chromium found in whales was several times higher than the level required to kill healthy cells in a Petri dish, Payne said.
He said another surprise was the high concentrations of aluminum, which is used in packaging, cooking pots and water treatment. Its effects are unknown.
The consequences of the metals could be horrific for both whale and man, he said.
"I don't see any future for whale species except extinction," Payne said. "This is not on anybody's radar, no government's radar anywhere, and I think it should be."
@JTT,
Quote: That's the problem right there, FM. You never point out the shortcomings of the US but you're front and center pointing fingers at everyone else.
Ive not avoided any responsibilities of our own past fishing practices. Ive decried the crash of cod and sharks by US fishermen.
Your argument seems to sound like "Dont do anything to stop the overfishing until the US accepts its share of responsibility"
Well, doing just that seems to be whats going on and we are gonna see Bluefins disappear by overfishing and environmental assault. (I cant deniy that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will cause perhaps irreperable harm to tuna stocks since this was where the ATlantic Population of Bluefin go to spawn.
You seem to be wound up in some "multiculturalistic" thingy that , while commendable and all, doesnt seem to want to address the damn problem of overfishing by whoever.
@msolga,
Replying to your post even though this item is related to whales of 44 million years ago - not to the Tokyo 2 - but may be of interest:
Quote:.....can, even now, anyone calculate that whales 40 million years ago would change their minds about moving to dry land and decide to move back to the wild blue yonder? The fact is, they did, losing their briefly-acquired legs in the process:
http://able2know.org/topic/121621-346#post-4385789
@High Seas,
We can only hope that nobody reaches any definite scientific conclusions from those cartoons.
@msolga,
Why don't they go back to their own hemisphere?
@hingehead,
Because they will conduct their commercial whaling activities any place they can, hinge.
And there are lots of whales to be found in a whale sanctuary.
@msolga,
Right then. From now on I'm only buying electronic goods from Korea and China (and Singapore). Will miss sushi.
Just on that point - why isn't there a call for a boycott of Japanese manufacturing? We'd certainly score points with our major trading partner; China. Often wondered that.
@hingehead,
Quote:Just on that point - why isn't there a call for a boycott of Japanese manufacturing? We'd certainly score points with our major trading partner; China. Often wondered that.
Probably because it most likely wouldn't work (in Oz, anyway), hinge.
Our two economies are so inter-connected.
That's why the Australian government spent so many years engaged in fruitless negotiations aimed at reaching a "diplomatic" solution with the Japanese.
It will be interesting to watch what develops with the Australian case in the International Court of Justice (planned for next year, apparently) with this new (Gillard) Labor government.
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/australia-to-take-japan-to-court-over-whaling-20100528-wlle.html
