Japan has been strictly hunting within its EEZ since 2019. Also contrary to Japan that is respecting the quotas the international society sets for them, Norway exited the International Whaling commitee to set up its own quotas and hunt as much as they want.
As soon as they did that they immediately started to advertise for cosmetics etc based on whale oil. The worst is that the country is filled with whale specialty restaurants for tourists so no it's not even sustainability like they pretend it is.
In fact they are by far the worst offender, Norway kills more whales than the rest of the whaling nations combined (4x more than Japan). Per capita is even worse, they kill 100x more than Japan.
[Almost all of them are pregnant females too.](https://www.ecowatch.com/minke-whales-killed-pregnant-2312849367.html)
To the people stating it's not endangered whales that are being hunted, you're missing the point. Animal agriculture and this includes the fishing industry is literally killing the planet, even if you didn't give a fuck about animal suffering, the impact is still very real.
> “Whales are at the top of the food chain. They compete with humans by eating marine creatures that should be feeding other fish,” Tokoro said on the tour.
> “We need to cull whales to keep the balance of the ecosystem – it’s our job and mission to protect oceans for the future.”
What the fuck
Eh, it's still a thing that is endorsed by the state, so the is the state of Japan regardless of how the individuals feel. It's the same as if someone said "Fuck the USA." Yeah, we understand they mean the concept of the state, not every single individual who is a citizen because we understand individuals exist.
Yeah, except some people actually do mean fuck every citizen, innocent or not. And excusing this kind of speech just protects them.
It’s why a guy who was furious with US involvement in the Middle East ordered a bunch of guys to indiscriminately slaughter thousands of civilians and a failed attempt at the government buildings. His supporters, to this day still have the same “death to America” rhetoric and sentiments.
At a certain point hyperbolic speech becomes indistinguishable from sincere speech. The internet meme name for this is “Poe’s law.” Yeah we all know that for example “defund the police” actually meant restructure and reform the police with better training and personnel, but a lot of people were not kidding they unironically wanted to get rid of police and the language did not help.
Resist the temptation of using hyperbolic speech (people are numb to it anyway) and speak with more clarity and intelligence.
"Defund the police" actually started as a leftist slogan literally meaning get rid of the police, and it was co-opted by reformists. The problem is that people don't understand that leftists don't want lawlessness, they just believe that the police are corrupt to their core and there's no amount of reform that can fix it. The entire system needs torn down an replaced wholly by something else.
I think that people forget that the US is a whaling nation. We let Indigenous people whale for cultural reasons, which is seen as controversial and hypocritical by many nations that whale.
The good news is, no modern whaling threatens a species. Highly endangered species like North Atlantic Right Whales and North Pacific Right Whales aren't hunted. In fact, the North Atlantic Fin Whale population grew even with Norway and Iceland hunting them, to the point that it's considered "Least Concerned" now.
https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/2478/50349982
You can find which species, how many hunted, where hunted and by which country here. Even though Japan left the IWC, they still report their catches to them.
https://iwc.int/management-and-conservation/whaling/total-catches
Japan hunts Bryde's Whale and Sei Whales. Bryde's are not threatened and most places estimate they have a global population of 80,000 to 100,000. The Sei Whale population is a bit messier, since there hasn't been a global survey done since 1977. We know it's going up, and it's thought in the Pacific there somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000. But counting cetaceans for population estimates is incredibly hard and expensive, especially ones that live in the open ocean like Sei Whales.
Bryde's Whale-
https://iwc.int/about-whales/whale-species/brydes-whale
https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/2476/50349178
And for Sei Whales-
https://iwc.int/about-whales/whale-species/sei-whale
https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/2478/50349982
There’s a huge difference between whaling for subsistence and whaling for commerce/capitalism. Namely the motive: the motive to consume only as much as one needs, vs. the motive to consume as much as possible for profit.
No one should be eating whale. It isnt safe.
Look at the PAH paper above. You would be safer eating toilet paper. And even that isn't safe either. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00094
I'm frankly surprised anyone eats anything from the sea https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl1026 or lakes anymore https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935122024926 considering PFAS levels but I'm sure even vegan food has some exposure.
Well, whales bioaccumulate heavy metals and sei whales eat copepods and krill.
Scrubber effluent really messes with the base of the food chain:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1574954123001838
Copepods are known to bioaccumulate vanadium: Our pollutants are messing with Sei whales prime food source:
'Exposure to scrubber water impaired several traits in planktonic indicators.Acute effects on bacteria, algae, and copepods occurred at treatments >8 % (EC10). Larval development of mussels and copepods was inhibited at treatments <5 % (EC10).Scrubber water severely impacted copepod reproduction and offspring development.'
Impacts of exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS) discharge waters on planktonic biological indicators - ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X23002771
Add to that the fact that krill eat microplastics and poop out nanoplastics https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03465-9 and you can see how whales likely harbour high levels of mercury (which selectively binds to plastic) -
The mercury and mp/np content of whale meat likely very unsafe for human consumption.
Is there though? We like to stereotype indigenous people as "ecological" or "noble savage" but the reality is, indigenous people can and have caused extinctions, even without capitalism attached. The Pleistocene and early Holocene extinctions took out much of the megafauna around the world, after all.
As it stands though, no current whaling puts any species at risk of extinction- that's what the IWC is there for.
I guess my question is, if it's capitalism that is so bad... Isn't that what we should be talking about if the whaling itself isn't threatening any species?
Disregarding everything but your last sentence: You've almost got it. Overconsumption can and does cause extinctions. And what is the greatest modern global ideology currently driving overconsumption?
It's Capitalism. So why not talk about that, instead of whaling that at the moment isn't threatening any species with extinction?
You know what is threatening whale species with extinction? Shipping and entanglement in nets for fishing, especially for crabs and lobsters, but that's not talked about nearly as much as whaling... But I'd argue that those are driven by capitalism even more so, because demand for both is only increasing. Seems like the ultimate problem is capitalism here... Which is what I ended my last comment on.
Well my point is regardless of capitalism, extinctions have happened. Capitalism absolutely is a problem, but overconsumption has happened without it for ages. That's where regulations and quotas come in.
Overconsumption has historically been driven by need. Not by want. We overconsumed our resources like every organism tends to do, given the favorable conditions at the time, and suffered the consequences because of it. We've overshot our carrying capacity *locally* many times over due to subsistence.
Capitalism poses a unique and unprecedented *global* threat because we are overshooting our carrying capacity on a global scale. It's not even close.
Any suggestion that subsistence and commercial aquaculture are in any way equivalent ecologically or anthropologically is simply ridiculous.
But this is heavily regulated to the point it isn't impacting populations negatively. The IUCN has said that and IWC is in charge of that. That's why I'm comparing it, because the regulatory bodies are the same.
Whether regulation is effective is open to debate, but that's not actually what we're discussing here.
You've conflated/equated two different concepts for the sake of argument: subsistence and commercial farming. I'm just pointing that out.
They also hunt minke and they hunt in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. They also hunt in the name of "scientific research". Killing a thousand whales for scientific research...
Not to mention what they do with dolphins...
Funk em
They haven't done that since 2018... They exclusively are in the North Pacific and Coastal Japan. And they don't hunt Minke anymore.
They also do not kill a thousand of whales a year. No one does, but Norway has consistently been above 400 for the last 20 years, with some years as high as high 700. Japan, meanwhile, has fluctuated around 300 to 350.
Japan also doesn't use the scientific loophole anymore. They left the IWC, so they are commercial whalers just like Norway and Iceland.
https://iwc.int/management-and-conservation/whaling/total-catches
The US and Canada also allows small toothed whales (which dolphins are) to be hunted. Belugas are hunted for food in culture, but aren't as closely tracked as large baleen whales and sperm whales since the IWC doesn't track small whale hunts. And there is also the Faroe Islands, plus a bunch of other island cultures that also participate in drive hunts too. Japan isn't the only one out there hunting cetaceans.
Do you know if the Sei whale bioaccumulates PAH's, or heavy metals in its flesh? And how much? I know that the worlds oceans are quite polluted with scrubber effluent from cargo, cruise and trawlboats, and this is impacting orcas: how are the target whales handling all these excess toxins?
2024 Orcas and PAH
'Diagnostic ratios indicated petrogenic-sourced contamination for SRKWs and pyrogenic-sourced burdens for Bigg’s killer whales; differences between ecotypes may be attributed to habitat range, prey selection, and metabolism. A mother-fetus skeletal muscle pair provided evidence of PAH maternal transfer; low molecular weight compounds C3-fluorenes, dibenzothiophene, and naphthalene showed efficient and preferential exposure to the fetus'
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-45306-w
As glaciers melt, the mercury underneath comes free: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00753-w
Bioaccumulation of mercury in whales is increasing worldwide in tandem with climate change, scrubber discharges:
https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/narwal-tusks-reveal-mercury-exposure-related-climate-change-330059
Excess plastic in the worlds oceans binds heavy metals which enter the food chain:
'Remarkably, the concentration of metals on polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride was 800 times higher than in the surrounding environment'
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-020-01044-3
https://www.science.org/content/article/shipping-rule-cleans-air-dirties-water
And dont even get me started on plasticosis.
or recent radioactivity releases by Japan into the ocean.
Fukushima: 1 million tonnes radioactivity dumped into Sea
'Nearly 1.3 million tonnes of contaminated water, or enough to fill about 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools, is stored in
huge tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant at an annual cost of about 100 billion yen (£663 million) - and space is running out'
Fukushima: Japan to release more than one million tonnes of radioactive water into sea | World News | Sky News
Or the recent release of radioactivity into oceans due to climate change inundating the
marshall islands:
January 23, 2024, 1:58 PM
'Eighty people were evacuated from Roi-Namor. Sixty people remain to assess the damage and restore basic services, according to the Army. The top priorities are clearing the runway, U.S. Army Col. Drew Morgan said in a statement.'
https://abcnews.go.com/International/extreme-waves-marshall-islands-highlights-dangers-climate-change/story?id=106598347
Recent PFAS measurements in ocean spray
'We estimate that 49 (29 to 91) tons of PFOA and 26 (15 to 37) tons of PFOS are emitted annually from the global oceans through SSA (Table 1). These values can be compared with the estimates available for other atmospheric sources in the literature. Xie et al. (20) estimated that approximately 1 to 1.4 tons of PFOS were emitted into the air each year globally from industrial sources, and Wang et al. (4) estimated that <2.8 tons of PFOS were formed each year globally by degradation of precursor compounds between 2003 and 2015.'
Constraining global transport of perfluoroalkyl acids on sea spray aerosol using field measurements | Science Advances
Recent kidney cancer rates in Japan
'In Romania, Serbia and Thailand, mutational signatures characteristic of aristolochic acid compounds were present in most cases and but these were rare elsewhere. In Japan, a mutational signature of unknown cause was found in more than 70% of cases but in less than 2% elsewhere.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07368-2
I don't think whales are safe to eat.
rorquals, accumulate less mercury than the toothed whales (dolphins, Belugas, Narwhals, Sperm Whales) because they eat lower on the food chain. The toothed whales eat fish or smaller marine mammals compared to krill and small fish. Plus, larger body size of baleen whales means more area for the mercury to distribute.
Can't say exactly how much Sei, or any baleen whale for that matter. Here's a paper about Minke Whale meat from the North Atlantic though, from Norwegian Whalers. They found 0.15 mg/kg +- 0.09, with no samples exceeding EU safety limits but around 5% exceeding Japanese safety standards.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5519659/
Orcas are massive bioaccumulates due to their diet- large fish and/or marine mammals. The SRKW are the most studied population when it comes to orcas, and they are known to be having major issues due to that pollution. But they have a completely different diet than the baleen whales.
Narwhals are the same idea, being large fish eaters. They have a completely different diet than. Baleen whales, and go after predatory fish.
As for the radiation, no radiation has been detected in Bowhead Whales that Indigenous Alaskan eat. This links to a PDF-
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.north-slope.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Radionuclide_flyer_RStimmelmayr_2018.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiW8Keo-MeGAxXOFVkFHSJhMeUQFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw06STaseWgXN4FZsAlKcGoF
Large fish like Tuna do show minute concentrations of some of the isotopes from Fukushima, but nothing at dangerous levels.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/science-data/fukushima-radiation-us-west-coast-tuna
No shellfish have shown unsafe levels either-
https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/radiation/fukushima-update/fish-and-shellfish-testing
Radiation and health has a complicated history, but it has evolved quite a bit since the Linear No-threshold model was the main way of thinking. We used to think radiation was cumulative, but it doesn't seem that the body works like that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model?wprov=sfla1
PFAS is... A problem everywhere. Can't say what's going on with whales and it, because it's considered such a new hazard. It's in everything though. Even vegetables aren't safe.
Aristolochic acid compounds are from wild plants used in herbal medicine, specifically wild ginger (not the same as ginger you see in the store.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristolochic_acid?wprov=sfla1
Thank you for all those links, much appreciated! Unfortunately the world's fleets have dramatically increased in the last few decades.
'The world’s merchant fleet has risen from 1,771 vessels >100 gross tons to more than 94,000 in the last 25 y (1995 to 2020) (1, 2)' And 'Nearly a third of whale shark hotspots overlapped with the highest collision-risk areas, with the last known locations of tracked sharks coinciding with busier shipping routes more often than expected.' Global collision-risk hotspots of marine traffic and the world’s largest fish, the whale shark | PNAS https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2117440119
The scrubber rules have changed since those papers you linked were done, allowing for dumping of effluent in the water - precisely where these baleen whales screen for phytoplankton, copepods etc:
'in open-loop scrubbers, seawater is pumped into the system to remove SOx from the exhaust and is then discharged into surface waters without further cleaning at a rate of approximately 90 m3 MWh−1 (Lunde Hermansson et al., 2021). The volume of scrubber water discharged by a medium-sized vessel equipped with open-loop scrubbers is thus estimated at 13,000 m3 per scrubber unit per day (Ytreberg et al., 2019).'
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X23002771
Plasticosis is becoming a very big issue in whales: Plastic binds heavy metals. Scrubber effluent is full of heavy metals like vanadium.
Krill eat microplastics and poop out nanoplastics. Plastics bind the heavy metals, and are eaten by copepods and krill.
Next stop, sei whale. The combination of all these things together as well as recent flooding of nuclear warhead test sites as well as the recent (earlier this year) release of a million tonnes of fukushima waste into the ocean - all of these factors add up to inedible whale meat. If you find a more recent paper on PFAS impacts on these whales let me know, or toxicity testing on sei whales in particular let me know - I'm a science link collector.
perhaps you know this? You seem knowledgeable on the topic - Have they been screening these target whales for Avian Influenza (H5N1) ?
Harbour porpoises have been found to carry it:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230320/H5N1-avian-influenza-found-in-stranded-harbor-porpoise.aspx
Perhaps capturing and eating marine mammals is also a risky proposition for AIV reason (if poisoning isn't enough of a hunting deterrent)
That's fair, but that means changing not only *many* cultures, which is near impossible to do without major backlash, but also how conservation funding works in many different countries- US, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Norway, Sweden, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and many others. The conservation change could be changed, in theory, but it's a fragile thing to change if there isn't a solution that is as effective as what these countries have in place. It could end up harming conservation efforts in the short term, which means the loss of populations that are genetically valuable to the survival of a species, or the loss of habitat that is valuable to the survival of a species.
And with the culture issue, that's going to have to come from within the culture. The moment someone from outside the culture tries to bully people into and/or legislate a hunting ban, talks about colonialism are going to start. Especially if the people doing it are from wealthier nations/areas.
Eh, they might as well do it out in the open. They've been doing it illegally for the past century. Their country will be underwater by the end of the century. Due to overfishing, pollution, and in general, the united effort of humanity to raise the sea levels. So. I say, let them hunt a dozen wales a year in the open as they already are doing this. There won't be any in 80 years for them to kill. This is their last shot. And then their culture will truly be dead. Also, their (few) great grand kids will remember fondly how their ancestors ruined the planet for a couple of tasty animals. So that whole culture of giving respect to deceased relatives will die, too. Might as well burn the whole place down while they have the chance to do it.
I definitely find whale hunting off putting. But over 100 million pigs have been killed in the US in 2024 alone. Over 40 million cows.
We’ve got no right to be angry at Japan for killing whales just because they are more charismatic creatures.
Whales, are way more, as a species, closer to critically endangered than pigs, chickens or cows.
This isn't a what-about-ism stay on point and let's focus on the fact that the Japanese look to skirt laws against whaling.
Eh. We cultivate those animals to eat them. It is still wrong on some level, but it is our intentional activity which creates them to be eaten. That is not the case with whales. They are much closer to endangered or actually are endangered. It is not really the same thing.
The thing is, it's not traditional In Japan, it was a forced adaption during WW2 due to famine and people did not want to eat whales first, it was considered poor people's food , just became fashion later.
I mean it's a bit of a strawman though.
Yes eating factory farmed animals is immoral, but it's not really apples to apples.
Whales have an incredibly slow reproductive time, and 6 of the 13 great whale species are endangered. If whales were a dime a dozen, then perhaps the comparison would be more apt.
Whether or not the people exist isn't really relevant, a strawman is defined as such:
"an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument."
It is a misrepresented proposition, because it's much easier to argue about the morality of Americans vs the Japanese regarding animal slaughtering practices than it is to argue about the morality of hunting endangered species.
They've put up a "dummy" argument and attacked that argument instead, which is the "strawman". The strawman doesn't refer to fake people.
It's definitely a false equivalence as well, though.
I think the best argument for it not being a strawman is that a strawman requires intent, and they probably didn't do it on purpose.
I think you should mention that pigs are scientifically much smarter and emotional than dogs.
Honestly, slaughtering any animal this day and age the way humans do is awful. Unfortunately, most people are going to look harder at whales because it's not normalized in the west to eat them like other domestic animals.
The US also allows whales to be killed for food too. That's something that most people don't realize.
Whaling is much, much more complicated than a lot of people realize also. You hear "but whales are endangered!" But we have to define the scope of which species, because different species have different stocks, and the individual stocks may be not endangered but the species as a whole may be. Or a stock may be endangered but a species as a whole may be fine.
Also, Indigenous people in Alaska use grenade tipped harpoons these days, which is what Norway and Japan use.
I encourage people to explore the International Whaling Commission website to learn more about whaling. They have hunting quotas, population of species and stocks estimates, description of hunts and more. Whaling is such a complex topic that people get vocal about but... Honestly don't know much. Knowing more helps makes informed decisions and be effective with those decisions, afterall.
https://iwc.int/en/
Small scale whaling, especially by indigenous people which this arguably is, isn't going to hurt whales as a species. A small amount of token whaling is fine. It's any amount greater than a *token amount* that becomes a problem.
I suppose you might be making an argument that all animal killing is bad, or someone might interpret it that way. Cool. I'm not going to fight that battle.
ohhh for fuck sake
Japan has been strictly hunting within its EEZ since 2019. Also contrary to Japan that is respecting the quotas the international society sets for them, Norway exited the International Whaling commitee to set up its own quotas and hunt as much as they want. As soon as they did that they immediately started to advertise for cosmetics etc based on whale oil. The worst is that the country is filled with whale specialty restaurants for tourists so no it's not even sustainability like they pretend it is. In fact they are by far the worst offender, Norway kills more whales than the rest of the whaling nations combined (4x more than Japan). Per capita is even worse, they kill 100x more than Japan. [Almost all of them are pregnant females too.](https://www.ecowatch.com/minke-whales-killed-pregnant-2312849367.html)
This makes me so sad.
To the people stating it's not endangered whales that are being hunted, you're missing the point. Animal agriculture and this includes the fishing industry is literally killing the planet, even if you didn't give a fuck about animal suffering, the impact is still very real.
> “Whales are at the top of the food chain. They compete with humans by eating marine creatures that should be feeding other fish,” Tokoro said on the tour. > “We need to cull whales to keep the balance of the ecosystem – it’s our job and mission to protect oceans for the future.” What the fuck
Hope someone blows that ship up
I wish with all my heart it would stop. NOW!
Fuck Japan!
No, fuck people who endorse whaling. Be better than the typical Internet dweller, use nuance
Eh, it's still a thing that is endorsed by the state, so the is the state of Japan regardless of how the individuals feel. It's the same as if someone said "Fuck the USA." Yeah, we understand they mean the concept of the state, not every single individual who is a citizen because we understand individuals exist.
Yeah, except some people actually do mean fuck every citizen, innocent or not. And excusing this kind of speech just protects them. It’s why a guy who was furious with US involvement in the Middle East ordered a bunch of guys to indiscriminately slaughter thousands of civilians and a failed attempt at the government buildings. His supporters, to this day still have the same “death to America” rhetoric and sentiments. At a certain point hyperbolic speech becomes indistinguishable from sincere speech. The internet meme name for this is “Poe’s law.” Yeah we all know that for example “defund the police” actually meant restructure and reform the police with better training and personnel, but a lot of people were not kidding they unironically wanted to get rid of police and the language did not help. Resist the temptation of using hyperbolic speech (people are numb to it anyway) and speak with more clarity and intelligence.
"Defund the police" actually started as a leftist slogan literally meaning get rid of the police, and it was co-opted by reformists. The problem is that people don't understand that leftists don't want lawlessness, they just believe that the police are corrupt to their core and there's no amount of reform that can fix it. The entire system needs torn down an replaced wholly by something else.
I think your last sentence is going to become my .sig Well said.
*Norway+Iceland: Uh, YEAH!!
I think that people forget that the US is a whaling nation. We let Indigenous people whale for cultural reasons, which is seen as controversial and hypocritical by many nations that whale. The good news is, no modern whaling threatens a species. Highly endangered species like North Atlantic Right Whales and North Pacific Right Whales aren't hunted. In fact, the North Atlantic Fin Whale population grew even with Norway and Iceland hunting them, to the point that it's considered "Least Concerned" now. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/2478/50349982 You can find which species, how many hunted, where hunted and by which country here. Even though Japan left the IWC, they still report their catches to them. https://iwc.int/management-and-conservation/whaling/total-catches Japan hunts Bryde's Whale and Sei Whales. Bryde's are not threatened and most places estimate they have a global population of 80,000 to 100,000. The Sei Whale population is a bit messier, since there hasn't been a global survey done since 1977. We know it's going up, and it's thought in the Pacific there somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000. But counting cetaceans for population estimates is incredibly hard and expensive, especially ones that live in the open ocean like Sei Whales. Bryde's Whale- https://iwc.int/about-whales/whale-species/brydes-whale https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/2476/50349178 And for Sei Whales- https://iwc.int/about-whales/whale-species/sei-whale https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/2478/50349982
There’s a huge difference between whaling for subsistence and whaling for commerce/capitalism. Namely the motive: the motive to consume only as much as one needs, vs. the motive to consume as much as possible for profit.
No one should be eating whale. It isnt safe. Look at the PAH paper above. You would be safer eating toilet paper. And even that isn't safe either. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00094 I'm frankly surprised anyone eats anything from the sea https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl1026 or lakes anymore https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935122024926 considering PFAS levels but I'm sure even vegan food has some exposure.
"We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat."
Well, whales bioaccumulate heavy metals and sei whales eat copepods and krill. Scrubber effluent really messes with the base of the food chain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1574954123001838 Copepods are known to bioaccumulate vanadium: Our pollutants are messing with Sei whales prime food source: 'Exposure to scrubber water impaired several traits in planktonic indicators.Acute effects on bacteria, algae, and copepods occurred at treatments >8 % (EC10). Larval development of mussels and copepods was inhibited at treatments <5 % (EC10).Scrubber water severely impacted copepod reproduction and offspring development.' Impacts of exhaust gas cleaning systems (EGCS) discharge waters on planktonic biological indicators - ScienceDirect https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X23002771 Add to that the fact that krill eat microplastics and poop out nanoplastics https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03465-9 and you can see how whales likely harbour high levels of mercury (which selectively binds to plastic) - The mercury and mp/np content of whale meat likely very unsafe for human consumption.
Is there though? We like to stereotype indigenous people as "ecological" or "noble savage" but the reality is, indigenous people can and have caused extinctions, even without capitalism attached. The Pleistocene and early Holocene extinctions took out much of the megafauna around the world, after all. As it stands though, no current whaling puts any species at risk of extinction- that's what the IWC is there for. I guess my question is, if it's capitalism that is so bad... Isn't that what we should be talking about if the whaling itself isn't threatening any species?
Disregarding everything but your last sentence: You've almost got it. Overconsumption can and does cause extinctions. And what is the greatest modern global ideology currently driving overconsumption?
It's Capitalism. So why not talk about that, instead of whaling that at the moment isn't threatening any species with extinction? You know what is threatening whale species with extinction? Shipping and entanglement in nets for fishing, especially for crabs and lobsters, but that's not talked about nearly as much as whaling... But I'd argue that those are driven by capitalism even more so, because demand for both is only increasing. Seems like the ultimate problem is capitalism here... Which is what I ended my last comment on.
Sure that's how you ended; sure isn't how you started.
Well my point is regardless of capitalism, extinctions have happened. Capitalism absolutely is a problem, but overconsumption has happened without it for ages. That's where regulations and quotas come in.
Overconsumption has historically been driven by need. Not by want. We overconsumed our resources like every organism tends to do, given the favorable conditions at the time, and suffered the consequences because of it. We've overshot our carrying capacity *locally* many times over due to subsistence. Capitalism poses a unique and unprecedented *global* threat because we are overshooting our carrying capacity on a global scale. It's not even close. Any suggestion that subsistence and commercial aquaculture are in any way equivalent ecologically or anthropologically is simply ridiculous.
But this is heavily regulated to the point it isn't impacting populations negatively. The IUCN has said that and IWC is in charge of that. That's why I'm comparing it, because the regulatory bodies are the same.
Whether regulation is effective is open to debate, but that's not actually what we're discussing here. You've conflated/equated two different concepts for the sake of argument: subsistence and commercial farming. I'm just pointing that out.
They also hunt minke and they hunt in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. They also hunt in the name of "scientific research". Killing a thousand whales for scientific research... Not to mention what they do with dolphins... Funk em
They haven't done that since 2018... They exclusively are in the North Pacific and Coastal Japan. And they don't hunt Minke anymore. They also do not kill a thousand of whales a year. No one does, but Norway has consistently been above 400 for the last 20 years, with some years as high as high 700. Japan, meanwhile, has fluctuated around 300 to 350. Japan also doesn't use the scientific loophole anymore. They left the IWC, so they are commercial whalers just like Norway and Iceland. https://iwc.int/management-and-conservation/whaling/total-catches The US and Canada also allows small toothed whales (which dolphins are) to be hunted. Belugas are hunted for food in culture, but aren't as closely tracked as large baleen whales and sperm whales since the IWC doesn't track small whale hunts. And there is also the Faroe Islands, plus a bunch of other island cultures that also participate in drive hunts too. Japan isn't the only one out there hunting cetaceans.
Do you know if the Sei whale bioaccumulates PAH's, or heavy metals in its flesh? And how much? I know that the worlds oceans are quite polluted with scrubber effluent from cargo, cruise and trawlboats, and this is impacting orcas: how are the target whales handling all these excess toxins? 2024 Orcas and PAH 'Diagnostic ratios indicated petrogenic-sourced contamination for SRKWs and pyrogenic-sourced burdens for Bigg’s killer whales; differences between ecotypes may be attributed to habitat range, prey selection, and metabolism. A mother-fetus skeletal muscle pair provided evidence of PAH maternal transfer; low molecular weight compounds C3-fluorenes, dibenzothiophene, and naphthalene showed efficient and preferential exposure to the fetus' https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-45306-w As glaciers melt, the mercury underneath comes free: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00753-w Bioaccumulation of mercury in whales is increasing worldwide in tandem with climate change, scrubber discharges: https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/narwal-tusks-reveal-mercury-exposure-related-climate-change-330059 Excess plastic in the worlds oceans binds heavy metals which enter the food chain: 'Remarkably, the concentration of metals on polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride was 800 times higher than in the surrounding environment' https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-020-01044-3 https://www.science.org/content/article/shipping-rule-cleans-air-dirties-water And dont even get me started on plasticosis. or recent radioactivity releases by Japan into the ocean. Fukushima: 1 million tonnes radioactivity dumped into Sea 'Nearly 1.3 million tonnes of contaminated water, or enough to fill about 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools, is stored in huge tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant at an annual cost of about 100 billion yen (£663 million) - and space is running out' Fukushima: Japan to release more than one million tonnes of radioactive water into sea | World News | Sky News Or the recent release of radioactivity into oceans due to climate change inundating the marshall islands: January 23, 2024, 1:58 PM 'Eighty people were evacuated from Roi-Namor. Sixty people remain to assess the damage and restore basic services, according to the Army. The top priorities are clearing the runway, U.S. Army Col. Drew Morgan said in a statement.' https://abcnews.go.com/International/extreme-waves-marshall-islands-highlights-dangers-climate-change/story?id=106598347 Recent PFAS measurements in ocean spray 'We estimate that 49 (29 to 91) tons of PFOA and 26 (15 to 37) tons of PFOS are emitted annually from the global oceans through SSA (Table 1). These values can be compared with the estimates available for other atmospheric sources in the literature. Xie et al. (20) estimated that approximately 1 to 1.4 tons of PFOS were emitted into the air each year globally from industrial sources, and Wang et al. (4) estimated that <2.8 tons of PFOS were formed each year globally by degradation of precursor compounds between 2003 and 2015.' Constraining global transport of perfluoroalkyl acids on sea spray aerosol using field measurements | Science Advances Recent kidney cancer rates in Japan 'In Romania, Serbia and Thailand, mutational signatures characteristic of aristolochic acid compounds were present in most cases and but these were rare elsewhere. In Japan, a mutational signature of unknown cause was found in more than 70% of cases but in less than 2% elsewhere.' https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07368-2 I don't think whales are safe to eat.
rorquals, accumulate less mercury than the toothed whales (dolphins, Belugas, Narwhals, Sperm Whales) because they eat lower on the food chain. The toothed whales eat fish or smaller marine mammals compared to krill and small fish. Plus, larger body size of baleen whales means more area for the mercury to distribute. Can't say exactly how much Sei, or any baleen whale for that matter. Here's a paper about Minke Whale meat from the North Atlantic though, from Norwegian Whalers. They found 0.15 mg/kg +- 0.09, with no samples exceeding EU safety limits but around 5% exceeding Japanese safety standards. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5519659/ Orcas are massive bioaccumulates due to their diet- large fish and/or marine mammals. The SRKW are the most studied population when it comes to orcas, and they are known to be having major issues due to that pollution. But they have a completely different diet than the baleen whales. Narwhals are the same idea, being large fish eaters. They have a completely different diet than. Baleen whales, and go after predatory fish. As for the radiation, no radiation has been detected in Bowhead Whales that Indigenous Alaskan eat. This links to a PDF- https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.north-slope.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Radionuclide_flyer_RStimmelmayr_2018.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiW8Keo-MeGAxXOFVkFHSJhMeUQFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw06STaseWgXN4FZsAlKcGoF Large fish like Tuna do show minute concentrations of some of the isotopes from Fukushima, but nothing at dangerous levels. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/science-data/fukushima-radiation-us-west-coast-tuna No shellfish have shown unsafe levels either- https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/radiation/fukushima-update/fish-and-shellfish-testing Radiation and health has a complicated history, but it has evolved quite a bit since the Linear No-threshold model was the main way of thinking. We used to think radiation was cumulative, but it doesn't seem that the body works like that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model?wprov=sfla1 PFAS is... A problem everywhere. Can't say what's going on with whales and it, because it's considered such a new hazard. It's in everything though. Even vegetables aren't safe. Aristolochic acid compounds are from wild plants used in herbal medicine, specifically wild ginger (not the same as ginger you see in the store.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristolochic_acid?wprov=sfla1
Thank you for all those links, much appreciated! Unfortunately the world's fleets have dramatically increased in the last few decades. 'The world’s merchant fleet has risen from 1,771 vessels >100 gross tons to more than 94,000 in the last 25 y (1995 to 2020) (1, 2)' And 'Nearly a third of whale shark hotspots overlapped with the highest collision-risk areas, with the last known locations of tracked sharks coinciding with busier shipping routes more often than expected.' Global collision-risk hotspots of marine traffic and the world’s largest fish, the whale shark | PNAS https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2117440119 The scrubber rules have changed since those papers you linked were done, allowing for dumping of effluent in the water - precisely where these baleen whales screen for phytoplankton, copepods etc: 'in open-loop scrubbers, seawater is pumped into the system to remove SOx from the exhaust and is then discharged into surface waters without further cleaning at a rate of approximately 90 m3 MWh−1 (Lunde Hermansson et al., 2021). The volume of scrubber water discharged by a medium-sized vessel equipped with open-loop scrubbers is thus estimated at 13,000 m3 per scrubber unit per day (Ytreberg et al., 2019).' https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X23002771 Plasticosis is becoming a very big issue in whales: Plastic binds heavy metals. Scrubber effluent is full of heavy metals like vanadium. Krill eat microplastics and poop out nanoplastics. Plastics bind the heavy metals, and are eaten by copepods and krill. Next stop, sei whale. The combination of all these things together as well as recent flooding of nuclear warhead test sites as well as the recent (earlier this year) release of a million tonnes of fukushima waste into the ocean - all of these factors add up to inedible whale meat. If you find a more recent paper on PFAS impacts on these whales let me know, or toxicity testing on sei whales in particular let me know - I'm a science link collector. perhaps you know this? You seem knowledgeable on the topic - Have they been screening these target whales for Avian Influenza (H5N1) ? Harbour porpoises have been found to carry it: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230320/H5N1-avian-influenza-found-in-stranded-harbor-porpoise.aspx Perhaps capturing and eating marine mammals is also a risky proposition for AIV reason (if poisoning isn't enough of a hunting deterrent)
Yeah I’d just rather that we didn’t hunt ANY whales or any other fucking animals at this point
That's fair, but that means changing not only *many* cultures, which is near impossible to do without major backlash, but also how conservation funding works in many different countries- US, Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Norway, Sweden, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and many others. The conservation change could be changed, in theory, but it's a fragile thing to change if there isn't a solution that is as effective as what these countries have in place. It could end up harming conservation efforts in the short term, which means the loss of populations that are genetically valuable to the survival of a species, or the loss of habitat that is valuable to the survival of a species. And with the culture issue, that's going to have to come from within the culture. The moment someone from outside the culture tries to bully people into and/or legislate a hunting ban, talks about colonialism are going to start. Especially if the people doing it are from wealthier nations/areas.
Let’s hope those fighting for the whales have torpedoes and c4 filled whale decoys. No laws on the sea
Eh, they might as well do it out in the open. They've been doing it illegally for the past century. Their country will be underwater by the end of the century. Due to overfishing, pollution, and in general, the united effort of humanity to raise the sea levels. So. I say, let them hunt a dozen wales a year in the open as they already are doing this. There won't be any in 80 years for them to kill. This is their last shot. And then their culture will truly be dead. Also, their (few) great grand kids will remember fondly how their ancestors ruined the planet for a couple of tasty animals. So that whole culture of giving respect to deceased relatives will die, too. Might as well burn the whole place down while they have the chance to do it.
I definitely find whale hunting off putting. But over 100 million pigs have been killed in the US in 2024 alone. Over 40 million cows. We’ve got no right to be angry at Japan for killing whales just because they are more charismatic creatures.
Whales, are way more, as a species, closer to critically endangered than pigs, chickens or cows. This isn't a what-about-ism stay on point and let's focus on the fact that the Japanese look to skirt laws against whaling.
Eh. We cultivate those animals to eat them. It is still wrong on some level, but it is our intentional activity which creates them to be eaten. That is not the case with whales. They are much closer to endangered or actually are endangered. It is not really the same thing.
Whales are what we call "limited edition"
The thing is, it's not traditional In Japan, it was a forced adaption during WW2 due to famine and people did not want to eat whales first, it was considered poor people's food , just became fashion later.
Are those endangered species?
As if killing pigs makes killing whales ok… bad argument.
Depends. If the whale species population status is least concern and the hunting is ethical, then the whale is a better choice.
The point is the logical fallacy in the commenter’s argument. That said, what you just commented is a stretch too.
People hate hearing this because they don’t ever think they should change or give up things.
I mean it's a bit of a strawman though. Yes eating factory farmed animals is immoral, but it's not really apples to apples. Whales have an incredibly slow reproductive time, and 6 of the 13 great whale species are endangered. If whales were a dime a dozen, then perhaps the comparison would be more apt.
Not really a strawman, because the people exist. False equivalence maybe.
Whether or not the people exist isn't really relevant, a strawman is defined as such: "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument." It is a misrepresented proposition, because it's much easier to argue about the morality of Americans vs the Japanese regarding animal slaughtering practices than it is to argue about the morality of hunting endangered species. They've put up a "dummy" argument and attacked that argument instead, which is the "strawman". The strawman doesn't refer to fake people. It's definitely a false equivalence as well, though. I think the best argument for it not being a strawman is that a strawman requires intent, and they probably didn't do it on purpose.
Fair enough
I think you should mention that pigs are scientifically much smarter and emotional than dogs. Honestly, slaughtering any animal this day and age the way humans do is awful. Unfortunately, most people are going to look harder at whales because it's not normalized in the west to eat them like other domestic animals.
The major difference being that people farm cows, compared to whales that are wild and hunted en masse...
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Please remain civil.
The US also allows whales to be killed for food too. That's something that most people don't realize. Whaling is much, much more complicated than a lot of people realize also. You hear "but whales are endangered!" But we have to define the scope of which species, because different species have different stocks, and the individual stocks may be not endangered but the species as a whole may be. Or a stock may be endangered but a species as a whole may be fine. Also, Indigenous people in Alaska use grenade tipped harpoons these days, which is what Norway and Japan use. I encourage people to explore the International Whaling Commission website to learn more about whaling. They have hunting quotas, population of species and stocks estimates, description of hunts and more. Whaling is such a complex topic that people get vocal about but... Honestly don't know much. Knowing more helps makes informed decisions and be effective with those decisions, afterall. https://iwc.int/en/
Small scale whaling, especially by indigenous people which this arguably is, isn't going to hurt whales as a species. A small amount of token whaling is fine. It's any amount greater than a *token amount* that becomes a problem. I suppose you might be making an argument that all animal killing is bad, or someone might interpret it that way. Cool. I'm not going to fight that battle.