Whaling is cruel & unwarranted and must stop. Commercial whaling has been banned since 1985. Trade in whale products is forbidden and the demand is falling. Nevertheless, every year, Japan, Norway and Iceland whalers slaughter approximately 1,500 whales between them. There is no humane way to kill a whale at sea. Countless whales die a very slow, painful death. This slaughter is pointless. Whales have been hunted since humans first learned to build boats. The North Atlantic saw the first large-scale whaling enterprises, first from Europe and then from North America, and as more coastal stocks became depleted the fleets sought their prey further afield to supply the market that they had created (Australia Maritime Museum, 2017 & Johan Nicolay Tonnessen, J. A. O, 1982). As time went on whaling became more popular with the development …show more content…
Japan is able to do this because they notoriously exploit a loophole in the convention to undertake ‘scientific whaling’ in the Southern Ocean (WDC, 2017) Scientific whaling is allowed under the convention, where it is necessary to obtain data that can be used in the management of whale stocks (Time, 2017). From the scientific permit Japan annually assigns themselves, they kill over 1,400 whales of different species and make around USD$61 million a year from the domestic sale of the whale meat. After all this slaughter there still has been no attempt to use any of the data composed for management purposes. Instead, the whale meat is sold for human consumption (ABC News, 2017). A greater abundance of whales also results in increased encounters with humans. This has been extremely positive, especially in Australia, where they have had a massive growth in whale-based tourism, worth over USD$300 million every year. Whaling and the sale of whale meats and oils only brings in USD$61 million per year (Humane Society International,