More: Sea Shepherd says it will abandon pursuit of Japanese whalers (29 August 2017)
Also:
The Whale Wars Continue
Animal Advocacy Sea Shepherd ceases operations in Southern Ocean
- Thread starter Second Summer
- Start date
-
- Tags
- japan sea shepherd whaling
Also:
The Whale Wars Continue
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2012
- Reaction score
- 19,493
- Age
- 64
- Location
- I'm liek, in Cali, dude.
- Lifestyle
- Vegetarian
OP
OP
I think what Watson is saying is that they simply can't continue because of increasingly hostile governments and anti-terrorism laws in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. in addition to the the now near impossibility of the task as the whalers are now being supported with military grade technology (satellite tracking) to easily avoid the Sea Shepherd ships.
I was wondering about this years ago:
Suppose some nations claimed individual whales as "theirs", but chose to let them live instead of harpooning them? It would be somewhat like the cattle-driving days of the American West. Of course, that system was abusive to animals and treated them as nothing more than a marketable commodity, but part of that system was: an outfit claimed animals as "theirs" by marking (painfully) as "their property" with an identifiable marking or "brand". As I understand it, the range as a whole was not owned by anyone, and unclaimed individual animals were up for grabs to anyone who could mark those individual animals... much like the situation of whales in waters which are not part of any nation's territory. Suppose non-whaling nations devised a system of tagging and claiming whales, and then letting them live (instead of harpooning them, cutting their flesh up for human consumption, and melting down their fat)? Just as technology lets whaling ships avoid the Sea Shepherd, similar technology could track whales and be used as evidence if a claimed whale was illegally killed by whalers.
I'm certain there would still be abuses, and therefore it's not nearly as good as banning whaling altogether. I've heard reports that some whaling nations are killing whale species whose numbers are still dangerously low, and international whaling regulations are not always followed. (I'm not even talking about the cruelty involved in killing a large, hard-to-kill, highly sentient animal.) But if some nation governments don't grasp the concepts of extinction or cruelty, maybe they would understand the concept of animals as someone else's property. It's far from perfect, but maybe in the current situation, it would be worth trying.
Suppose some nations claimed individual whales as "theirs", but chose to let them live instead of harpooning them? It would be somewhat like the cattle-driving days of the American West. Of course, that system was abusive to animals and treated them as nothing more than a marketable commodity, but part of that system was: an outfit claimed animals as "theirs" by marking (painfully) as "their property" with an identifiable marking or "brand". As I understand it, the range as a whole was not owned by anyone, and unclaimed individual animals were up for grabs to anyone who could mark those individual animals... much like the situation of whales in waters which are not part of any nation's territory. Suppose non-whaling nations devised a system of tagging and claiming whales, and then letting them live (instead of harpooning them, cutting their flesh up for human consumption, and melting down their fat)? Just as technology lets whaling ships avoid the Sea Shepherd, similar technology could track whales and be used as evidence if a claimed whale was illegally killed by whalers.
I'm certain there would still be abuses, and therefore it's not nearly as good as banning whaling altogether. I've heard reports that some whaling nations are killing whale species whose numbers are still dangerously low, and international whaling regulations are not always followed. (I'm not even talking about the cruelty involved in killing a large, hard-to-kill, highly sentient animal.) But if some nation governments don't grasp the concepts of extinction or cruelty, maybe they would understand the concept of animals as someone else's property. It's far from perfect, but maybe in the current situation, it would be worth trying.
