The Pros And Cons Of Commercial Whaling

The act of hunting whales has been around since the beginning of human history. However, overexploitation throughout the last centuries has severely depleted these species. Yet still, thousands of whales are killed each year for profit. Mankind’s avaricious nature for more money has driven these creatures to their demise. Despite that, an increasing number of people worldwide are against commercial whaling. This is due to the issues associated to commercial whaling such as the inhumane killing methods, the non-demand whale products and the disruption of ecosystem (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1). One of the main issues associated to the infamous commercial whaling is the inhumane killing methods. Ideally, humane killing is the causing of death without pain, stress or distress perceptible to the animal, thus, rendering an animal insensitive to pain as swiftly as technically possible is the aim of humane killing (Gillespie, 2005). Unfortunately, methods used in modern commercial whaling does not classify as humane killing. In 1940, Dr Harry Lilie, compared a draft horse pulling, screaming in pain as its drover stabbed it until it bled to death to a harpooned whale

Changes in predator abundance can cause cascading effects to the ecosystem structure, functioning and resilience (Baum & Worm, 2009). Due to the sperm whales’ large body size, large population size, high trophic level and potentially important role in top-down control of cephalopods, the impact of their reduction may be more significant than that of other species. North Pacific sperm whales are significant cephalopods predators. Removal of sperm whales in the North Pacific could lead to dramatic increase in abundance of large squids, subsequently leading to the decline of sardine landings (Croll, Kudela & Tershy, 2006). This could majorly tip the fragile balance of the marine