Why are people against killing whales?

[creatiwe]

you say that they are only there to eat krill.

let me ask you something. did you forget about watching lion king? The circle of life also works under the sea. when they die plankton feed on them and krill feed on it again.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

Spoiler

just a couple of thoughts:

I'll let George Carlin do the talking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw&feature=player_embedded

The guy in the video is an idiot frankly.

25 species a day go extinct "regardless" of human activity?

In this day and age, with information available to anyone with access to a computer, there is no excuse for such ignorant stupidity from anyone living in the developed world. Human activity is causing the sixth mass extinction [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4797-earth-faces-sixth-mass-extinction.html].

In defense of the clip: that clip was from 1992, its completely irrelevant now and I guarantee if he was still doing stand up he wouldn't have said something that stupid with as you say the information available to everyone with access to a computer.

Not to put down what you are saying, but i figured an FYI would be a good thing to put there, cause I like George Carlin I found him to be a very funny and very accurate (most of the time time, obviously) comedian.

But he does have a point, anything we do to the earth, short of a virus bomb, the earth will recover, as it has numerous times before. An species going extinct isnt necessarily bad, how would you like it if dinosaurs were still around and eating us left right and center?

The dude in the video, Carlin or whatever, has no point except the fact that he is extremely ignorant. There is no way to justify wiping out entire ecosystems "because". Human beings are an ecological disaster for the planet and there really isn't a reason for it beyond lazyness, pride, or cost, and they aren't good reasons at all.

Also could people stop saying "whales are endangered" Whales Can not be endangered, because they arnt a SPECIES. Just because some whale species are endangered doesnt mean the whole Order is.

Whales are endangered though. Keep over-fishing, keep polluting, keep on wrecking the very place you live and they will be gone, just like so many other creatures before them have gone. The difference between now and the last 65 million years is that this is a mass extinction, and biodiversity is under severe attack. If it continues at its current rate we run the real risk of going that way ourselves.

And once humans are done with all our frucking over the ecosystems, planed earth wont skip a beat, it WILL heal its self and life will continue to go on like it has for about 3 billion years. I ask what is bad about Destroying an ecosystem?

What is so bad about destroying an ecosystem of the earth is that I would like to something for my children and their children to live on, thank you.

The life that is here isn't some unthinking resource for us to plunder. It is alive, hence the reason it is called "life". Wrecking it just to demonstrate that you can strikes me as immature and short-sighted, not to mention foolish beyond belief.

An NO WHALES ARE NOT FUCKING endangered, Some whale (maby most) species are endangered. Are all Primates endangered because chimps and orangatangs endangered? NO, last time i checked there is 7 billion primates on this planed, doesnt sound endangered, does it?

The entire oceanic environment [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/314/5800/787] is endangered. Whales, just for your information, live in the sea.

 

[Asturiel]

See, there is one thing that humans CAN NOT KILL OFF, or else we will all die.

That thing is PLANTS. Screw animals, they'd all die anyway. Being against killing "insert animal here" doesn't make any sense, because we can survive without them.

Oh yeah, and we'd need insects to keep the plants alive. So insects and plants. Don't kill em. Animals? Go ahead.

We need those creatures to keep those in check. Nature has created a fragile, complex, but amazing system that we would be best not to fuck with. Kill one species off and there is a chance that you may have very well collapsed an ecosystem for some food.

OT: To be honest, we don't need commercial whaling, perhaps if it is an inuit tradition or something I would allow them to do it because they would very likely A) Use the whale to it's fullest and B)Keep the whale population plump because if they don't they don't have food. Balance is key when dealing with nature folks.

 

[Magnalian]

Wait... People eat whale? I was genuinely unaware of that. In fact, I've never even pondered the meaning of whale hunting. But anyways, I would much rather they weren't hunted... In the same way that I would much rather cows weren't hunted. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to eat them.

As far as I know whale hunting is illegal everywhere, yet they still do it in Japan. Or rather, they're hunting whales 'for science', and after they're done with the corpse they sell the meat and whatever-the-hell people use from a giant sea mammal. They're still hunting them, they're just not calling it that. And they get away with it.

 

[Billion Backs]

P.s. I come from Iceland where whale hunting isn't so illegal and everyone frown upon it so I don't get the point.

You just pwned yourself. Any decent society will ban all hunting of any endangered species, including marine ones.

Hey genius. THERE IS MORE THEN ONE TYPE OF WHALES. And not ALL of them are endangered.

What pisses me off about all the so called "green" and "eco" movements is that in most cases they're nothing but sensationalist cults filled with clueless believers and not actual thinkers.

 

[Julianking93]

Because they're endangered.

Why the fuck else do you think we're against killing them?

Do research on the subject before you ***** about it.

I think you should do some research.
There are a bunch of different kinds of whales, many of which are not endangered.

That I know, but many of them are and that's why people get so pissed off when people kill whales.

 

[koether]

awesome response! I am such a fan of you

 

[Spencer Petersen]

If you exterminate an entire species it can have disastrous consequences on the ecosystem. The populations of things whales eat can explode and the effects are very hard to predict.

 

[Marter]

Because whales are not what most consider a traditional animal to kill. They are also a lot harder to breed, unlike cattle or pigs.

 

[Grahwo]

I just had whale meat (Minkewhale - Vågehval in norwegian) for dinner 2 days ago when i was visiting my parents =)
Whale tastes just delicheous, its tenderness, the way it tastes.. unmatched to anything I know. (i have like 1.5kg of whalemeat in my freezer atm)

As to whale catching. I dont mind it the slightest.. ITs food?! Just because folks are so inlove with free whillie people have gone bananas. Aslong as the ammount of whale catched is limited to a certain ammount so that their numbers does not decrese.. We are FINE.

Aslong as we dont overfish.. there is no problem with catching whales! and ATm the Minke Whale population is more than large enough for norway to catch some 5-600 of them a year. and still the population is raising.. so i dont see the problem.


Also.. these massive things.. eats LOOOOADS of fish.. Tons upon tons.. and the ammount of fish in general in the world isnt really on a raise >_> So keeping their numbers down is a must or they will eat up everything if we just let them grow.

 

[conflictofinterests]

I think until we make a successful biodome of our own, killing off species may not be in our best interest, as we haven't quite worked out which are necessary and which really could be wiped out and we'd be none the worse for. Therefore, leave the whales alone.

 

[Calatar]

Every species has a role to play in the ecosystem, whales eat plankton, fish and squid. Whales keep the fish and squid populations down so they don't overpopulate and kill themselves off.

You know who also eat planktons? Fish, and you know who also eat fish? No? Well it's us humans and we can keep the fish population "under control".

Essentially you don't care what species die, so long as you're unaffected.

We overhunt fish too. We overhunt a lot of stuff we hunt. Especially when it comes to things with slow reproductive cycles and large lifetimes (K strategists). Historically, we suck at figuring out just what our effects on the environment will be. And those with vested commercial interest in hunting typically aren't the best at determining how much is "too much" hunting. We're ecologically short-sighted. We may have power over our environment, but we don't have control.

Still, the main reason why people don't like hunting whales is people feel empathy for whales. If you're capable of feeling empathy for non-human species, you'll probably feel like not shooting tiny bombs into whales which causes them to painfully bleed to death. If you aren't, then you don't give a damn, and they're just objects waiting to be eaten and processed by humans.

 

[himemiya1650]

My guess is that it's related to this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFwxH3PPWiU

 

[Grahwo]

Because whales are not what most consider a traditional animal to kill. They are also a lot harder to breed, unlike cattle or pigs.

We in norway have been killing whales for over 1200 years >_>
You can say we have a.. tradition for hunting it =)

 

[pelopelopelo]

Are they in any risk of being stop existing?
Think about it they eat tones of food every day and they are pretty much big blubber bags.
If your arguement is "They are so cute,I wear a whale T-shirton't hurt them" then your just being irrational.
So I ask you escapists, why shouldn't we just kill the whales? More food for us and I call it survival.


P.s. I come from Iceland where whale hunting isn't so illegal and everyone frown upon it so I don't get the point.

Well why bother keeping humans alive? They're just sacks of meat waiting to die.

I don't know if you've noticed, but we've already turned eating cows, sheep and pigs into an industry, why do we need to go after the animals that there are significantly less of, just for a tasty bite?

 

[Grahwo]

As far as I know whale hunting is illegal everywhere, yet they still do it in Japan.

No its not!
Norway hasent agreed to ICW's ban of whalecatching.. and therefor isnt bound by it..

 

[Marter]

Because whales are not what most consider a traditional animal to kill. They are also a lot harder to breed, unlike cattle or pigs.

We in norway have been killing whales for over 1200 years >_>
You can say we have a.. tradition for hunting it =)

My breeding point still stands.

I was also talking from a North American standpoint, as that is where I am from. I know that in some places, Whales have been hunted, but those countries have now hunted too much and have not allowed the species to replenish.

So shame on you...