Ady Gil Loses Bow to Japanese Whaling Vessel

[infantryian]

From watching the Whale Wars tv show, it was stated that the Japanese claim the whales they are killing are for scientific research. After the research is done the Japanese admit to selling the whale meat as it is no longer needed.
My question to put out there is how many whales do you need to kill before you have a large enough sample size on whatever it is you are "researching"?

One of the Sea Sheppard crew members was actually former Canadian Navy (officer I think, but not sure). She came up with a small checklist to speed up loading and launching of smaller raceboats. The checklist also had some items addressing safety as they had capsized one of their boats while launching it. The first officer completely ignored it and even told the camera something along the lines of 'adding a military checklist to our campaign could only make things take longer and endager more lives.'

 

[ArmyRick]

hey wonderbread, why do say "f**k whales"?

Just joking I hope. Seriously, whaling is one industry that need not exist. One thing I am absolutely for is conserving animal species and reducing unneccessary slaughter.

I take offence to your remark. 

 

[ballz]

If I try to park my VW Jetta in front of a tractor trailor to try to stop it, because the trailor was full of, I dunno, a shipment of KFC and I am against KFC, that would make me an idiot.  Not much difference here IMO.

Slight difference ... you know how to properly drive your Jetta, and your passengers know how to act properly as passengers.

If you want to accurately portray this scenario as a comparison ... have your passengers ride on the roof on the WAY to get in front of the tractor trailer ... oh, but don't teach them how to use any safety straps or harnesses you give them first ... just get them up there, they can learn on the fly ...

Unless your cause is to satisfy hunger, then I'd volunteer to get up on the roof.

 

[Fusaki]

I take offence to your remark. 

I'm not being serious.  I'm just trolling, that's all. ;D

 

[bdave]

WOW really! This must be another of your Wikipedia sources again! Hundreds of thousands eh!

http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2007/05/22/would-you-believe-3-species-go-extinct-every-hour/
http://forests.org/archive/general/coolfact.htm
http://www.whole-systems.org/extinctions.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/2/l_032_04.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100126024245AABdKlC

To name a few. All of them have links to other credited sites.

'The American Museum of Natural History in New York reports: "Three species become extinct every hour of every day. More than 30 species become extinct while you sleep at night. More than 20,000 species become extinct every year."'

Good enough?

However, http://dodosgone.blogspot.com/2007/06/extinction-rate-estimates.html


While hundreds of thousands was a hyperbole, the extinction rate is several (tens of)  thousands a year.

OHH they feed their starving people with the whale meat, I guess those fifty whales really made a world of difference keeping the population of Japan well nourished and full!!! 

"Typical weight of a blue whale: 108,000 kg (238,000 lb); up to 136,000 kg (300,000 lb)."
50 times 100 000 kg = 5 million kilograms.

We can say that a person eats 100kg of meat a year. That's 220 pounds. I'm sure it is much much less than that, but for the sake of discussion we will claim 100kg.
5 million kilograms / 100kg per person =  50 000 people. This is an entire year of food for 50 000 people.
If you cut it down to 20kg per person, it's a quarter of a million.

Then again, this is only half a percent of the entire blue whale population. You are blowing this out of proportion.
Also, "An estimate of the recent rate of increase of blue whale abundance in some regions of the North Atlantic yielded a result of 5.2% per year"


source: http://www.animalinfo.org/species/cetacean/balamusc.htm

If you took the time to read you would see that my problem is the way they kill these animals, and that it does affect other people; not just Japan!
[...]
"Harpooned dragged and then when exhausted from trying to get away they are shot over and over with a rifle until a major organ is hit"

How do you suggest they kill the whales then?
When people say things like this it always reminds me of lions chasing buffalo.
We are only allowed to kill animals painlessly, right?

 

[bullitt]

Ohhh boy, here we go
1) You said hundreds of thousands of animals- not SPECIES!!
2) all your fancy sources (excluding yahoo answers lol) say that that nice number of three per hour you spouted off, is species of insects plants and micro-organisms! NOT ANIMALS!
3)We are talking whales not plants, which by the way if you read your sources says most have not even been discovered yet- They are estimating!
4) I like your math on the weight of the whale, but those figures are for whole whales, after they are gutted and sliced up the amount of usable meat is far less, not that it matters because!!!!
5)"Whale was an important protein source for an impoverished Japan after World War Two, but has become an expensive, gourmet food that rarely appears on family dinner tables and can usually be eaten in just a handful of specialty restaurants." Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST23751320080415 (I know its no yahoo answers from some grade 10 student but it will have to do!)

how do you suggest they kill the whales then?
When people say things like this it always reminds me of lions chasing buffalo.
We are only allowed to kill animals painlessly, right?

Finally Lions hunt because they have no choice- they die if they don't, we are not animals were human ( don't think I need to source that?). Japan hunts and kills cruelly because of the almighty $$$

I am done wasting my time on this, My only problem was the cruelty and your observation that it effects no one else. You came back with all these sources which quite frankly don't support your argument. OHH and yes as human being who are able to have some sense of moral enlightenment we are only allowed to kill animals painlessly!! Unless you feel the need to drown kittens in a sack I dunno.....

 

[Dean22]

I would just like to point out that over 50% of species that are currently recorded on our Green Earth are types of beetles.

 

[ballz]

Finally Lions hunt because they have no choice- they die if they don't, we are not animals were human

Wtf.... we're just smarter, more evolved animals? Or some of us anyway.

What's going to kill a lion if it eats some grass instead?

 

[1911CoLt45]

Crazy video.

 

[vonGarvin]

What's going to kill a lion if it eats some grass instead?

Starvation and malnutrition would kill a lion if it gets no prey: that's how they work.  Same with us (more or less), UNLESS we supplement protein with replacements. 

People, it's much easier to just eat some meat once in a while.  As for the whales, well, I have no opinion on the matter.

 

[ArmyRick]

I am ok when it comes to hunting animals that are in abundance and not wasted (meat, bones, etc is all used). In fact I quite enjoy a tasty mammal, fish or bird myself.

But that just it, what benefit is there to hunting whales? None. They are on the decline and it has a major impact on the ocean's ecological system.

I love Bison steaks and burgers. If they were endangered or there was a serious threat of them going extinct, I would glad pass on my favorite burger for a few years to allow the population to recover.

Thats my opinion anyways.

 

[bdave]

Ohhh boy, here we go
1) You said hundreds of thousands of animals- not SPECIES!!

Splitting hairs.

2) all your fancy sources (excluding yahoo answers lol) say that that nice number of three per hour you spouted off, is species of insects plants and micro-organisms! NOT ANIMALS!

Insects are animals.
If 10 000 species go extinct every year, and 90 percent are insects and plants (which is probably too high a figure), then that is still 1000 species of 'animals' that go extinct.

3)We are talking whales not plants, which by the way if you read your sources says most have not even been discovered yet- They are estimating!

And?
These same estimations tell us if they are endangered or not.

4) I like your math on the weight of the whale, but those figures are for whole whales, after they are gutted and sliced up the amount of usable meat is far less, not that it matters because!!!!

Again, splitting hairs.  How do you know the organs aren't used as food or bait? It's not wasted.

5)"Whale was an important protein source for an impoverished Japan after World War Two, but has become an expensive, gourmet food that rarely appears on family dinner tables and can usually be eaten in just a handful of specialty restaurants." Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST23751320080415 (I know its no yahoo answers from some grade 10 student but it will have to do!)

Completely irrelevant. Once again, it is 0.5 percent of the blue whale population.  Which, regardless of what you want to think, is an incredibly small number. The 900 or so mink whales are not even close to extinction and are actually overly abundant.
I repeat, the "endangered" whales are so scarcely hunted that it doesn't even need to be mentioned.
The other whales are in abundance. So exactly where is this danger of whale extinction?
What, you think people with an agenda might actually grossly exaggerate their claims? This cannot be!

Finally Lions hunt because they have no choice- they die if they don't, we are not animals were human ( don't think I need to source that?). Japan hunts and kills cruelly because of the almighty $$$

Money makes the world go round, money also allows certain people to have jobs. If they have no jobs, they have no money; if they have no money, then no food, and if they have no food, they die.
To quote you :"Finally, Japanese fishermen hunt whales because they have no choice- they die if they don't".
Surely you can understand that.

And what a stupid thing to say. We aren't animals?
While the term can refer to any living creature other than humans, we are very much animals.
Just because we're incredibly intelligent does not mean we aren't animals. If you replaced our intelligence with strength, would we then be animals and not humans? Do you equate intelligence with humanity?

I am done wasting my time on this, My only problem was the cruelty and your observation that it effects no one else. You came back with all these sources which quite frankly don't support your argument. OHH and yes as human being who are able to have some sense of moral enlightenment we are only allowed to kill animals painlessly!! Unless you feel the need to drown kittens in a sack I dunno.....

My argument? All i had to back up was the fact that several thousands animals die a year...which they do.
I gave you many sources.

You said:
'the fact that near-extinct species are being killed, however, the tactics used by these "activists" are nuts!'.

I called you out on it and then said many animals go extinct a year. You called me out on that and I proved you wrong by citing 5 organizations claiming what I was saying.

It doesn't affect anyone else. Had you never heard about these whales being killed for their 'meat', would you have noticed? I sincerely doubt it. Hell, you can tell me they're killing off the panda bear, and I still wouldn't know.
So, again, how does it affect YOU?
And, again, your misplaced concept that we are not animals is just sad. Intelligent people don't limit themselves because of some misguided sense of arrogant self righteousness.
If anything, I am being more compassionate than you are because I put animals on the same plane of existence.
It's the circle of life.

I like how you equate killing an animal to eat (regardless of how painless it is...because it's not always possible to kill an animal without hurting it in some way) to drowning kittens.

 

[ballz]

Starvation and malnutrition would kill a lion if it gets no prey: that's how they work.  Same with us (more or less), UNLESS we supplement protein with replacements.

Wow I didn't know that... I'd better go take a steak out for supper ;D I only ate meat 3 times yesterday but one can only be so safe you know?

 

[Kat Stevens]

I'm going to split a hair here.  .5 of 1% is not a huge number to you?  That's one in every two hundred animals...yearly.  If one in every two hundred people in your home town were killed, annually, would that be considered a high number by you?  I have no dog in this fight, as Free Willy never deeply touched my heart, and I do not have any close personal cetacean friends, but whaling, in this day and age of microwaveable bacon and synthetic cheese, is an antiquated and barbaric activity that has no place in the modern world.

 

[ballz]

I'm going to split a hair here.  .5 of 1% is not a huge number to you?  That's one in every two hundred animals...yearly.  If one in every two hundred people in your home town were killed, annually, would that be considered a high number by you?  I have no dog in this fight, as Free Willy never deeply touched my heart, and I do not have any close personal cetacean friends, but whaling, in this day and age of microwaveable bacon and synthetic cheese, is an antiquated and barbaric activity that has no place in the modern world.

Come ON... COME ON... You're really comparing hunting animals for food/furs/etc etc which all still comes down to food on the table, to killing a human being???

This is about sustainability...

Newfoundland awards about 30k moose licenses a year, and the moose population is about 120k-150k. There's an 88-90% success rate. That's at the very LOWEST 17.6% of the population.

Guess what? They're still overpopulating the damn island to the point that 200-300 get killed a year because they were crossing the street at the wrong time.

But I guess this is a bad example because we Newfs are sea-kitten murderers so we're just as bad as the Japanese.

 

[Kat Stevens]

Just so we're clear ballz for brains, my point was about .5%  being a large part of a population.  I don't give a shit if you're a Newfie or a left handed lesbian eskimo, what the fuck does that have to do with anything?  We kill lots of moose and deer and other delicious critters out her in Alberta too, and plenty also still get killed on the roads, what's your point?  You guys are up to your arses in moose because there is no natural predation, and if there were you'd just kill them off, let's face it, your conservation record ain't the best.  There was supposed to be enough cod to last till the end of time, how did that work out for you?  To compare the number moose in Canada to cetaceans in the ocean is ludicrous.  A moose matures to full adulthood in 2 years, how long to replace a killed adult whale?  Don't trot out that poor misunderstood Newfie bullshit on me, I'm not buying it, and it has nothing to do with what I said, killing whales is UNNECESSARY in this day and age.

 

[PMedMoe]

Come ON... COME ON... You're really comparing hunting animals for food/furs/etc etc which all still comes down to food on the table, to killing a human being???

This is about sustainability...

Newfoundland awards about 30k moose licenses a year, and the moose population is about 120k-150k. There's an 88-90% success rate. That's at the very LOWEST 17.6% of the population.

Guess what? They're still overpopulating the damn island to the point that 200-300 get killed a year because they were crossing the street at the wrong time.

But I guess this is a bad example because we Newfs are sea-kitten murderers so we're just as bad as the Japanese.

If you must know, moose are not native to Nfld.  Their population there is very well controlled by the moose hunt.  If the whale population could be that well documented and controlled, we wouldn't even be discussing this.  As far as them getting hit due to overpopulation, that's just stupid.  They're getting hit because there is a highway in the middle of their migration and feeding paths.

IMHO, I don't think Kat was comparing killing a human to killing an animal.  He was using that comparison to portray the numbers (0.5 of 1%) quoted by someone else.

 

[COBRA-6]

Well if the Minke population is around 665,074 like it says on the ref linked on wikipedia, and the Japanese are harvesting about 900 Minke's per year, then that would be a harvest of about 0.135% of the local Minke population, or between 1/10th and 2/10th of 1%.

Now I'm no whale biologist like the guy in the pic, but that seems pretty sustainable to me...

 

[Kat Stevens]

You harvest corn, you kill animals, and it's still unnecessary.

 

[ballz]

If you must know, moose are not native to Nfld.  Their population there is very well controlled by the moose hunt.  If the whale population could be that well documented and controlled, we wouldn't even be discussing this.  As far as them getting hit due to overpopulation, that's just stupid.  They're getting hit because there is a highway in the middle of their migration and feeding paths.

IMHO, I don't think Kat was comparing killing a human to killing an animal.  He was using that comparison to portray the numbers (0.5 of 1%) quoted by someone else.

I do know that moose are native to Newfoundland... That's irrelevant. They are here now, and even though we kill off 20ish percent of them every year from hunting alone, they're still thriving. They are getting hit because there's a gazillion of them. You do not know what it's like here. They're everywhere.

I realize Kat was pulling that 0.5 from someone else, but in terms of conservation, if an extra .5% of humans were killed every year, we'd still be populating the earth like weeds. 0.5% is SFA, and if a species can't survive losing 0.5% due to predation, then Darwin and I say screw 'em.

So it's a terrible example for sustainability, so it DID come across as a "how would you like it you" comment whether that was intended or not.

I could argue with you about the migration stuff, but I don't think there's going to be much facts to find about moose in Newfoundland... But besides the fact that our highway goes *around* the island, and not through anything, and the fact that I don't think moose here migrate (why would they.. there's no reason. There is not one time of year where my area isn't full of moose. They're everywhere, in all areas. Even if they do migrate you'd never know the difference... West moose are moving east, east are moving west. They're just everywhere). The caribou, however, do migrate, and they're rarely killed on the roads.

You guys are up to your arses in moose because there is no natural predation, and if there were you'd just kill them off, let's face it, your conservation record ain't the best.  There was supposed to be enough cod to last till the end of time, how did that work out for you?  To compare the number moose in Canada to cetaceans in the ocean is ludicrous.  A moose matures to full adulthood in 2 years, how long to replace a killed adult whale?  Don't trot out that poor misunderstood Newfie bullshit on me, I'm not buying it, and it has nothing to do with what I said, killing whales is UNNECESSARY in this day and age.

There is tons of predation here for them. Newfoundland has the biggest black bears in North America and they're rarely hunted, there's plenty of them. Coyotes here are actually a hybrid of a wolf, and take down Moose and they're decimating the Caribou population. Add in humans taking their 20% share....

I wasn't pulling out an "misunderstood Newfie" crap. You seem to be all against whaling just because it was killing a poor whale, nothing to do with sustainability, so I figured your next comment would be something along the lines of our sealing industry. It's not like you didn't try and take a shot at our conversation record, which is hardly anything to do with OUR fishing industry... maybe a few other country's...

But since your point is that .5% of the population is large, that's why I brought moose into it. Yes, moose might mature quicker, (2 years instead of 7 to 10 years from what I'm reading), but have way longer lifespans. Even if they didn't, my logic tells me if they take 5 times longer to mature, then you'd be able to kill them off at 1/5th the rate... I'm no biologist obviously so my logic may be flawed, but 1/40th the rate is pretty convincing to me that it's not a big deal...