Whaling Should Be Banned

Whaling has become a major issue in recent years. We have seen an increase in this practice, which involves the killing of whales for commercial use. The number one country in whaling is Japan. Japan leads all countries in this act of brutality towards whales. Whaling in Japan is not done specifically for an economic purpose nor to feed citizens, as Japan claims (Wingfield-Hayes, 2016). With this being said, the Japanese have attracted a huge amount of disapproval from everywhere in the world. To many Japanese it’s a manner of pride and culture, something they have been doing for so long, so why should the world tell them otherwise? In the midst of all the information and research at hand to show whales are undergoing a decline in their population,

There are two sides of this debate within the convention. On one side, you have the people who are in favor of sustainable whaling subject to scientifically based regulation and then those who believe that commercial whaling should be banned even though scientific findings determine that certain whale stocks can recover from regulated commercial harvests (Aron, 2000). The ICW, in 1982, put in place a moratorium by bringing the quota levels of whale catches to zero for all whale species in its binding (Rolland, 2014). In a nutshell, a moratorium prohibits the use of factory ships for whaling, the only exceptions are the smallest and most populated whale species (“The Whaling Controversy”, 2002). Many want a change of wording within the regulations of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, who created the ICW, because many of the anti-walling supporters within the convention believe that the clauses have granted the right for the pro-whaling people to keep doing what they are doing. With that being said, the majority of the members disapprove whaling operations (Iliff, 2006). In 2006, the Japanese attempted to normalize the ICW and by that they wanted to return to the old ways of the ICRW which favored the pro-whaling supporters. Luckily, the Japanese failed to pass this since the meeting they organized was boycotted by anti-whaling nations and because now the majority of supporters belonged to the anti-whaling group. This lead to the process of modernizing the ICRW, but was met with much resistance by the opposite side (Iliff, 2006). Basically, the two parties can’t find a compromise or a middle ground in this situation. They have been going back and forth on this for a very long time. There is speculation that the Japanese might withdraw from the convention, due to the fact of many failed attempts to pass rules that benefited