We Are Living With Whales

People eat pork, chicken, beef and many other kinds of meats. It depends on the country, but the most common meats are the three I just mentioned. But I like to eat whale meat, hours meat and others, but when I say that to my friends they get really surprised. How different eating whale and beef? They are both animals and we need to eat meats to live. Now in world whale hunting is becoming a big topic of discussion. Should we allow countries to keep hunting whales or not?. Some countries are saying all species of whales should not be hunted anymore, and some countries say the world should allow countries to hunt some kinds of whale. I agree with the second idea. There should be a freedom for hunting some species of whales and it is worth fighting for.

Whale hunting has been condemned as an act of barbarism from some countries. But is it so? The people who say it's an act of barbarism doesn't have a culture to eat whale. That's why they say it's an act of barbarism. But for me, not trying to understand other culture is more an act of barbarism. That's just a prejudice. Not having whale hunting in your own culture doesn't mean it's an act of barbarism. How do you feel if your own culture was condemned as barbarism? For some countries, they don't have a culture of eating animal meats such as pork and beef. And if they say eating animals are barbarism because they don't have culture to eat them, do you think you will accept that opinion? Also condemned whale hunting as an act of barbarism, without even trying or having experiment doesn't make any sense. How can you tell it's barbarism or not about something you never tried before? People should first start to understand each others culture. A girl lives in Lofoten Island says "I've grown up with whale hunting" , whale hunting itself is already a culture for some countries. However, the main reason people use as evidence to embargo whale hunting is that the number of whales are decreasing. But in recent days there are interesting facts that scientists have found out.

The number of whales in the sea are actually increasing since people started making laws tightly to protect them. Not all of them but some of the whales number are increasing. Like minke whales, sei whales and finback whales. There are not accurate but minke whales increased there number, in 1979 number of minke whales were about 110000 and them increased to 690000 and now the number of minke whales are more than 1000000. Therefore, if the number of whales are actually more than the time we were still hunting whales, what is the reason to stop whale hunting? Countries that have hunting whales, are not complaining about the restriction placed on the protection of endangered species; they just want to hunt whales that are not endangered. Just allowing few whales that increased their numbers will be a great help to keep the culture that are connected to whales. Additionally, now there are almost no whales are endangered. Few of the whales such as family of right whales and platanistoidea need to be protected since their population is less than 10000, but they are completely protected and are slowly starting to increase their numbers. Therefore, whales are not decreasing their numbers because of humans and their life is not threatened as before. But now they are facing a new crisis, called the change of ecosystem.

Whales are the biggest predator in the sea ecosystem. Only the organism who eats whales are orcas and humans. But since the restriction was placed on whale hunting, humans were no longer their predator. As a result number of whales increased and whale itself started to become threatening to sea ecosystem. Whales usually eat 4% of their weight in one day. It depends on the species but most whales average weight is about 15~20t. Means that they eat about 600kg~800kg. You might think it's not a big deal but this number is only for one whale, and also there are some species that has more than 100t weight like humpback whales. Also there is a fact that amount of fish that whale eats are about triple to quintuple of world's fishery productions. As the whales number increase more, the sea ecosystem will be more effected. Hunting too much whales will affect the ecosystem, but also not hunting at all will also effect the ecosystem.

Because of all these reasons; whale hunting itself is already a culture, the number of whales are actually increasing and the whales are effecting the ecosystem. Whale hunting should not be prohibited. Of course I think a few kinds of whales should still be protected since their numbers are not increasing, but the others should be free to be hunted. It is important for the hunters to think about the numbers of whales and not to over fish them. But if they are not, we should not prohibit whale hunting. For this topic, there are some difficult problems to solve, people’s feeling. Some people have empathy to kill whales. But to take in meats, we should kill animals, that’s how we take in pork and beef. Every thing we eat are lives. We cannot live without killing another life. I'll say even eating vegetables are killing life too. They are living every day, growing and making seeds to pass on the next life. It's a sad thing but the truth that we have to kill lives to live are unable to change. That’s why we thanks to the food, to the life that animal and plants gave to us. Do you still think whale hunting should be prohibited or do you think it should be allowed for some species of whales?