Why are people against killing whales?

Iron Mal

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Yes, some species of whale are endangered and whatnot but trying to save species that are endangered is in a way interfering with nature.

Nature is a cruel and uncaring ***** at the best of times (and actively out to get every single one of you at the worst), when a species goes extinct it opens up the oppertunity for another, lesser species to thrive and succeed in their absence.

Yes, some species of animal that are endangered are beautiful and majestic (I will miss pandas dearly when they go, I absolutely love them) but people seem to forget that species die out every day and are reletively forgotten about (just as new species are discovered every day, something which is also overlooked).

Trying to keep some animals around is kind of like trying to keep a mortally wounded person alive on life support (sure, they might survive, but it's unlikely and you're just drawing their suffering out longer).
 

Commissar Sae

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I'm going to play a different card. Whaling isn't economically viable anymore. According to Fjarmalaraddgof the lack of foreign markets means that the profit made on whale meat is negligeable. The only major market for whale meat is Japan, and they do most of their own whaling.

Iron Mal said:
Yes, some species of whale are endangered and whatnot but trying to save species that are endangered is in a way interfering with nature.

Nature is a cruel and uncaring ***** at the best of times (and actively out to get every single one of you at the worst), when a species goes extinct it opens up the oppertunity for another, lesser species to thrive and succeed in their absence.

Yes, some species of animal that are endangered are beautiful and majestic (I will miss pandas dearly when they go, I absolutely love them) but people seem to forget that species die out every day and are reletively forgotten about (just as new species are discovered every day, something which is also overlooked).

Trying to keep some animals around is kind of like trying to keep a mortally wounded person alive on life support (sure, they might survive, but it's unlikely and you're just drawing their suffering out longer).
Yeah but is it really interfering with nature when the only reason they're going extinct is because of human interference in the first place. I'm all for letting creatures evolve or die out on their own, but killing thousands of creatures with guns or harpoons and then saying its nature seems kind of contrived.

To go with the person analogy. It's like shooting a guy and saying he was going to die anyway so why try to keep him alive.
Edit: Actually it would be more like the doctors saying "why bother keeping him alive, hes already been shot by Bill down the hall and he probably had it coming anyway."
 

Jfswift

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Nov 2, 2009
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Klarinette said:
I was going to mention something about controlling the fish population, but overfishing is currently a problem. Something about endangered species... I don't know. I'm sure they do something to help balance the ecosystem, but I don't know. I have a hard time believing that every single species on the planet is "playing its part". *shrug*
..and that sums up my feelings as well. I can't envision every single animal doing something useful (but maybe i'm wrong about that).
 

Jeopardy

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Apr 16, 2009
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I dont understand why this is so difficult to understand. Whales like every other animal plays a part in the eco system. They are endangered like many other animals because of our actions.
Ive seen a few people here say we can live without them. Well guess what, no, no we cant. If you throw the ecosystem out of balance then we screw up the entire world. Not straight away but yes it will happen, then do you know what happens? Everything dies including humans.

So based on that theory you should have an answer. If you truely dont understand or know why people are against killing certain animals, or why you just plain shouldnt drive them to extinction then you need to get a bit more of an education.

Thats that taken care of. NEXT!
 

Lee Black

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1. Many species of whale ARE in "risk of being stop existing"

2. As the example of Japan's vast stockpiles of meat they have in freezers, supply far outstrips demand so that leaves "because we can" as the only reason for whaling.

3. Whaling on a small scale for genuine cultural reasons is a long chalk from sending a fleet of ships thousands of miles to the Southern Ocean which one has no cultural link with to harvest hundreds of whales for "scientific research" which has yet to produce any data while flouting an agreement you signed as Japan is currently in the habit of.

4. Whale meat tends to be high in mercury so eating it regularly can be rather bad for your health (yes this actually does have a fair amount of real research behind it).

5. Saying they eat food therefore we should eat them and leave more for us show a fundamental lack of understanding on how a food chain and ecosystem works, as does saying we can do without animals if we eat them all.
I'm not even going to dignify that with an explanation and will only suggest you do some freakin' reading for a change and look up what happens when you remove an apex predator from an ecosystem and then remove a bunch of building blocks at random from same (jenga anyone).


In conclusion.
Because we can, not good enough.
Plenty of other things to eat.
Not a great food source anyway.
Possibly catastrophically bad for your health.
Read a fucking book!
 

Iron Mal

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Commissar Sae said:
Yeah but is it really interfering with nature when the only reason they're going extinct is because of human interference in the first place. I'm all for letting creatures evolve or die out on their own, but killing thousands of creatures with guns or harpoons and then saying its nature seems kind of contrived.
This is true, but then this means that we are interfering with nature even more and with no real goal or purpose outside of a feeling of guilt or altruism (whaling and the such is at least weakly justified by the need for whale meat, even if the demand for it has lessened in recent times, in which case so will the amount of whaling).

Humans mostly have an impact on our environment as a result of our need for food and resources, we require more of them due to our huge population, technological advances and effective domination of the planet so our impact on the environment is going to be disproportionately higher as a result (I doubt you'll get loggers wiping out entire rainforests for the lulz and hunters eliminating entire populations because they love the smell of napalm in the morning).

I'm not saying that makes us entirely innocent but it does mean that trying to guilt trip ourselves by saying we have a 'horrific impact on the planet' is a little bit unjustified, we're not forest creatures anymore, we don't live in harmony with the tress.
 

Canadamus Prime

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Jun 17, 2009
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Daverson said:
canadamus_prime said:
There is no species on Earth that's stupid enough to hunt another to extinction except humans.
This arguments always comes up when people talk about animals near to extinction, or any ecological nonsense...

And it's complete and utter bullshit. If anything, Humanity's sentience makes us less likely to do this sort of thing.

Other animals however, are not so forgiving. Forms of Algae, for example, have destroyed entire ecosystems in ponds and lakes by blocking out sunlight, and effectively suffocating every living organism inside. Red and Black Ants famously have enormous conflicts between colonies over resources (in human terms, you'd call this "genocide", as the colour difference is the only thing that separates the ants). Heck, the smallest and most basic form of life on earth, the virus, effectively procreates by destroying other species it encounters.

And before you say "but they're not smart enough to know what they're doing is wrong", smarter animals are usually worse. Elephants, considered to be one of the few species with a similar level of intellect to humans (elephants, unlike most animals, possess a sense of self, as in, they know what they are. If you show an elephant a mirror, it knows it's looking at it's reflection, unlike say, a dog, which thinks it's seeing a different dog), have been observed killing other species for entertainment alone.

If you seriously think that any other species, given half the chance, wouldn't kill the entire population of another for food, or because they're competing for food, then you are gravely mistaken.
I already said I stand corrected on that. But as for that other stuff you threw at me, I'd like to remind you that human beings are not the only sentient life forms on this planet and I'd appreciate you not misusing words. Also I severely question just exactly how you or indeed anyone knows exactly what say, the Elephant you mentioned, is thinking or feeling. Or the dog, how the hell do you, or anyone, know that it thinks it's seeing another dog when it looks at it's reflection? All anyone has to go on is observations of their behaviour, observations which are made from a purely human point of view. So in other words, we're interpreting their behaviour from a purely human stand point which is quite likely getting it completely wrong. If I were to hazard a guess, although I've never actually seen a dog look at it's reflection in a mirror, I would think since dogs interpret the world primarily through their noses, it would conclude that since it can't smell the reflection, it isn't real. I did see my dog (my she rest in peace) react to a dog on TV once and the result was much like that, she went up to the screen, sniffed at it a bit, I assume she concluded that the image wasn't real and went back to what she was doing before.
 

Wintermoot

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the stonker said:
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-shirt:Don'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.
because they are at risk of exticntion I agree with you I am FOR whale hunting and hate those hippy,s from the sea shepherd
 

fenrizz

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crystalsnow said:
Hardcore_gamer said:
I am from Iceland to, and yes most of the foreign anti-whalers don't know jackshit what they are talking about. Thankfully the international whaling committee (I think it is called that) is discussing a change in the laws since most of its members are threatening to leave it, and they have made a proposal to Iceland that would allow us to hunt roughly 140 whales a year and its pretty decent.

reg42 said:
Because they're, you know, endangered.
No, they are in fact NOT!

"The whales are endangered" logic falls apart once you remind people of the fact that their are many different species of whales, and that only some of them are endangered. The species we are hunting aren't one of them.
First of all genius, how do animals become endangered in the first place? Obviously has nothing to do with hunting them. Also, care to explain WHY you need to hunt them so badly in the first place?
In the past, several types of whales were hunted to near extinction.
This is not the case anymore (for Norway and Iceland at least), we only hunt Minke whale and some Fin whale.

Norway's quota:
Catches have fluctuated between 487 animals in 2000 to 592 in 2007. The catch is made solely from the Northeast Atlantic minke whale population, which is estimated at 102,000

Iceland's quota:
30 Mink whale (2006) and 9 Fin whale (out of an estimated population of 30000).


And we don't need to hunt whale, not more than you need to hunt small/big game.
Or need to buy a new car.
 

gamefreakbsp

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I assume the majority of people who are supporting whale killing on this thread are just trolling or being sarcastic. However, on the off chance that some of you are actually serious about a "pro whale killing stance", you are indeed devoid of sense. Whales are endangered. that should be all there is to it. Beyond that though, some of the comments about killing all the whales being about survival and asking the question "Why shouldn't we kill them?" instead of "Why are we killing them?" are just plain idiotic. What kind of reasoning do you use to think that killing whales is about human survival? Jeez, some people.....
 

The_Blue_Rider

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Because Whales are in danger of becoming extinct, the methods of killing them is inhumane, and they cannot repopulate very fast.
 

Commissar Sae

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Iron Mal said:
Commissar Sae said:
Yeah but is it really interfering with nature when the only reason they're going extinct is because of human interference in the first place. I'm all for letting creatures evolve or die out on their own, but killing thousands of creatures with guns or harpoons and then saying its nature seems kind of contrived.
This is true, but then this means that we are interfering with nature even more and with no real goal or purpose outside of a feeling of guilt or altruism (whaling and the such is at least weakly justified by the need for whale meat, even if the demand for it has lessened in recent times, in which case so will the amount of whaling).

Humans mostly have an impact on our environment as a result of our need for food and resources, we require more of them due to our huge population, technological advances and effective domination of the planet so our impact on the environment is going to be disproportionately higher as a result (I doubt you'll get loggers wiping out entire rainforests for the lulz and hunters eliminating entire populations because they love the smell of napalm in the morning).

I'm not saying that makes us entirely innocent but it does mean that trying to guilt trip ourselves by saying we have a 'horrific impact on the planet' is a little bit unjustified, we're not forest creatures anymore, we don't live in harmony with the tress.
I agree in a way. We need resources to live, this includes animals and plants. I'm not suggesting we should all be vegan tree-huggers and try to live with no ecological impact. I for one quite enjoy eating meat and quite enjoy the conveniences of modern living. The way whaling has limited itself to certain races is a step in the right direction. (of course certain endangered whales aren't exactly helping themselves much --> see right whales braining themselves on ships.) I think the industry really just needs to limit itself to fairly small margins. Icelands quotas (as quoted by Fenrizz) seem quite reasonable and within understandable profit margins. Theres really no point in killing whales unless someones going to buy the meat, and even then, there are more cost effective ways of getting meat.
 

Redlin5_v1legacy

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Aug 5, 2009
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Neonbob said:
Because they don't realize just how dickish whales really are.
Or they think they're cute somehow.
Or they didn't have their entire family killed by a roving pod of humpbacks.
The naive fools.
Haha, your avatar really explains your opinion without words.

OT: Some people need a cause to dedicate themselves to. I don't think the situation is dire yet but I think we should care about them. Just don't kill them all, leave some for next year :D
 

TheTim

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Uhm just about every species of large whale is fucking endangered? its fucking common sense to try and save them.
And how would you like it if you had a harpoon shoot into your stomach and dug in until you're dead, causing horrendous pain? then sliced open on the boat and gutted.
wouldn't appreciate it would you?
 

fenrizz

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gamefreakbsp said:
I assume the majority of people who are supporting whale killing on this thread are just trolling or being sarcastic. However, on the off chance that some of you are actually serious about a "pro whale killing stance", you are indeed devoid of sense. Whales are endangered. that should be all there is to it. Beyond that though, some of the comments about killing all the whales being about survival and asking the question "Why shouldn't we kill them?" instead of "Why are we killing them?" are just plain idiotic. What kind of reasoning do you use to think that killing whales is about human survival? Jeez, some people.....
Dear Sir, I must urge you to check your facts before asuming that us pro whalers are for killing endangered whale.

As I have said numerous times in this thread, Norway and Iceland (the countries which I have knowledge about whaling in) do not hunt endangered whale.
We hunt the Northeast Atlantic minke whale, averaging in about 500 to 600 individuals hunted per year out of a population of over 100.000.
 

ParkourMcGhee

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Wadders said:
Terramax said:
Wadders said:
It's because they are in risk of being stop existing.
I see what you did there.
Bigfootmech said:
Wadders said:
It's because they are in risk of being stop existing.
Yes, them being stop existing is becoming a real problem in these parts.
:D

I know English isn't OP's first language, but I couldn't resist taking the mickey.
Don't worry, I was going to do the same thing, then I saw and built off yours... Just Cause. ;)

Besides I'm not even sure it's a genuine topic, it smells of troll.