Japanese Whalers? Isn%26#039;t it a bit of a joke that Japan can get away with hunting endangered humpback whales under the guise of %26#039;scientific research%26#039;. I just found this article and was apalled that despite the Japanese admitting to selling the meat at restaurants, there has been no attempts at stopping this whale hunt.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,228...

I am not a vegetarian or a greenie, but I do believe in preserving what we have left of our natural world. I also understand that Australia was quite the whaling country in the 50%26#039;s and 60%26#039;s. But when an endangered species such as the humpback is being hunted just so some Japanese restaurant can make AU$6.30 a plate, I am disgusted.

Should this continue it may, in nearby years to come, cripple the AU$3 billion Australian and New Zealand whale watching industries.

Why aren%26#039;t the world leaders doing more about it?
If you were a world leader, what would your %26#039;diplomatic%26#039; solution be?

Additional Details

8 months ago

I%26#039;m not having a go at the fact that they eat whale, I just don%26#039;t like the fact that it has to be humpback whales, which just happen to be one of the cornerstones of the Australian and New Zealand tourism industries, and an endangered species.

Why not hunt Minke whales instead, which I believe, are abundant in the Pacific Ocean. They wouldn%26#039;t have to travel far from home and wouldn%26#039;t be destroying the Antarctic Ecosystem or effecting anyone%26#039;s tourism industries.

8 months ago

Too true, Dick E.
Howard was a gutless bastard. Go Kevin %26#039;07!
And I wouldn%26#039;t call harpooning a human way to kill anything!
Benthic...just google Japanese Whaling and you will find that its all done by harpoon, no humanity there.

With the Japanese, It is hard to differentiate between Scientific research and profit. It seems that they make a profit by doing %26quot;so called%26quot; scientific research. We can%26#039;t stop them from hunting in International waters though their vessel could be seized if they enter Australian waters. John Howard had no guts. Let%26#039;s hope that Rudd makes it perfectly clear to them.
KEEP OUT.

EDIT. Benthic, perhaps you are the one that should do some research. It is not humane the way these animals are killed and never has been.

• Answer hidden due to its low rating

  It%26#039;s hard to believebut in the mid-ninties, a Japanese whaling ship wandered into Canadian waters and a Canadian military vessel sunk the ship and killed everyone on board! And even more unbelieveable, there was barely a mention of it in the media in either country. Of course this has to do with them being in Canadian waters and it%26#039;s illegal there but still.
  Anyway, to the very best of my knowledge, %26quot;scientific%26quot; whaling if done under the proper guidelines does not endanger whales. The whale crisis ended years ago. There was a combined world effort and the populations are very high now. Even the Japanese stopped whaling for a long time until stocks came back up. If there are reports of ships killing endangered whales, they would certainly be put in prison in Japan too.
  
  EDIT
  Come on with the humane thing. Killing animals will never be humane to certain amount of people no matter if we haul the whale out of the ocean and give it a lethal injection or not. It%26#039;s whale, not an Etheopian. People gotta eat and whales are food the same as tuna. They let tuna flop around for hours on deck before they die you know. Poor tuna. No one cares about you because it%26#039;s unpopular...