Earth to Msolga. Do you copy? Over!

there's an argument that can be made on the basis of level of sentience. It's an entirely amoral one and so moral indignation over the killing of whales does suggest immoral indifference to the killing of cows and turkeys.

Whales, are wild

Several whale species are still in recovery from almost being brught to extinction in the 19th century.

I have the strong suspicion that MsO is weighing in on this discussion via her thumb.

I have the strong suspicion that MsO is weighing in on this discussion via her thumb.

So are bears and deer and elk and moose but you don't rail against those who take them, O mighty hypocrite

Theyve obliterated a treaty, theyve defied rules, theyve established quotas to which they attest that these numbers RE VIABLE. We all have to accept that these foxes will watch the henhouse really well for the whales sake. RIIIIIGGGGHHHHTTTT

Theyve obliterated a treaty

We have made huge investments in training and hiring game managers, Rangers, (What do you call em in UK?).

Extinction, which is hardly a consideration despite your critical mass sophistries, is a vital feature of evolution. And humans are part of evolution

So to become an agent of extinction is our mission? according to you

Yes but unconsciously in the main

Somebody once said, I forget who, that only the cuddly and the cute will survive man's exploitation of Nature

... since we protect several really ugly as **** species .

AND the treaty is not a "gentlemens agreement"

IWC is a voluntary international organization and is not backed up by treaty. Therefore, the IWC, in essence, is a voluntary organization which has substantial practical limitations on its authority. First, any member countries are free to simply leave the organization and declare themselves not bound by it if they so wish. Second, any member state may opt out of any specific IWC regulation by lodging a formal objection to it within 90 days of the regulation coming into force[21] (such provisions are common in international agreements, on the logic that it is preferable to have parties remain within the agreements than opt out altogether). Third, the IWC has no ability to enforce any of its decisions through penalty imposition.

...

The pro-whaling nations accuse the IWC of basing these decisions upon "political and emotional" factors rather than upon scientific knowledge given that the IWC prohibits all whaling, even though its own Scientific Committee has concluded since 1991 that quotas on some species of whale would be sustainable. They argue the IWC has swayed from its original purpose and is attempting, under the guise of conservation, to essentially grant whales an entitlement to life via an absolute protection from being killed by humans for commercial purposes.[24]
Non-IWC whaling nations have expressed similar sentiments. Canada withdrew from the IWC after the vote to impose the moratorium, claiming that "[t]he ban was inconsistent with measures that had just been adopted by the IWC that were designed to allow harvests of stocks at safe levels."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Whaling_Commission

Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary
.

Early in the 20th century, the rapacious global appetite for whale oil and other products drove whalers to the Southern Ocean, with disastrous results for whales. In 1994, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) established the Southern Ocean as a whale sanctuary called the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary (SOWS). Japan has continued to kill whales in the Sanctuary under an exemption for so-called "research whaling."
Background



In the years prior to the IWC’s historic 1982 decision setting all commercial catch limits to zero for an indefinite time (the “moratorium”), the Commission had already put in place a number of important protection measures, among which the setting of individual zero catch limits, over time, for all the large baleen whales in the Southern Hemisphere, a moratorium of indefinite duration on the catching of sperm whales, and a prohibition on pelagic whaling (i.e., whaling using factory ships accompanied by catcher boats) for all species and stocks except the minke whale. Thus the direct effect of the 1982 decision, as far as the Southern Ocean was concerned, was to set zero catch limits for the minke whale throughout the Southern Hemisphere, and to confirm all of the existing zero catch limits for the other species.


One of the main reasons for the 1982 decision was to allow the depleted species and populations an opportunity to recover, not only in terms of their abundance but also to permit them eventually to reassume a more robust and natural age and sex composition. This was further reinforced by the IWC’s subsequent decision, in 1994, to establish the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary (SOWS), covering the summer feeding grounds of an estimated 80-90% of the world’s whales. The rationale for creation of the SOWS included several elements, perhaps most importantly the need for long-term protection of all the whale species for which the IWC has acknowledged conservation responsibility (especially in the context of the development of the Revised Management Procedure (RMP) within the IWC’s Scientific Committee in the early 1990s). However, in contrast to the 1982 decision, the SOWS proposal included the concept of ecosystem restoration, with a view to healing the deeply wounded Southern Ocean ecosystem as a whole.

Current Issues

Some whale species and populations appear to be increasing under protection (view a poster of Southern Ocean whale and dolphin species) but it remains unclear to what extent the Southern Ocean ecosystem might return to anything like its biodiverse and biologically productive state before "modern whaling" began in the early 20th century. For a number of IWC members the SOWS was also part and parcel of a strategy of protecting the precious and unique Antarctic region as a whole. It was furthermore hoped that the creation of the sanctuary would encourage long-term non-lethal research on these populations, of a type and on a scale that had not been supported by Commission members until then. Since the 1982 decision came into force, however, government funding of research on the status of whales in the Southern Ocean has been largely directed to studies related to the possible resumption of commercial whaling on particular species.

While it is the IWC’s duty to monitor the consequences of its own decisions, prime among them the landmark decisions of 1982 and 1994, a unique opportunity to do so in the Southern Ocean has been lost by the IWC's failure so far to organize long-term surveillance of the region. The IWC's Scientific Committee now has no accepted estimate even of the approximate number of Southern Hemisphere minke whales. ASOC finds it remarkable that no attempt has yet been made by the IWC to estimate the numbers of the other baleen whale species from the second and third circumpolar sighting series conducted as part of the IWC’s International Decade of Cetacean Research (IDCR).

The research conducted in the Antarctic over the last two decades under Article VIII of the ICRW has involved the killing of nearly ten thousand minke whales and 13 fin whales. The majority of the IWC's Scientific Committee, and the Commission itself, have repeatedly said that this "scientific whaling" has contributed little or nothing either to information needed for proper management of any renewed whaling under Article V of the ICRW or to better scientific knowledge about whales in general. In particular, reviews carried out by the Scientific Committee have shown unequivocally that the JARPA (Japanese Whale Research Program under special permit in the Antarctic) programme has failed to attain any of its originally stated objectives, such as estimation of the natural mortality rate of minke whales and the nature of interactions among baleen whale species

She's made it quite clear that she's quite comfortable with the choice she's made not to be here.