There are so many things that a culture brings to the modeling of an individual.

And I think if the culture were to maintain its ethnic history and activities without the aid of technology, then traditions could be carried on without conscience or lack of integrity.

When advanced technology and knowledge makes its way into any culture, however, there is a blending that must and does occur.

And along with that blending of culture and technology, decisions must be made which affects one’s life as one moves forward with that new knowledge.

That new knowledge does not have to negate the old.

At a very basic level, if your life changes from a subsistence style life to a more modern approach, it becomes less of a need to go out and hunt. However, with today’s technology, hunting whales, fish and mammals can be done at a massive rate and in some cases, to the point of extinction.

More advanced countries, like Japan, in recent years, have become technically proficient at killing fish and whales in incredible numbers.

A population of more than 125 million, Japan consumes better than 33 percent of the seafood in the world. And as such they have encroached other countries and are contributing to depleting the ocean’s resources. And for that reason (among others), sanctions are being brought upon them based on their consumption that affects smaller populations such as the Inuit. And with those sanctions labeling connections to the Inuit are made such as animal cruelty and on the flip side, pollution and the depletion of marine resources.

In Iceland, specifically the Faroe Islands,  fin whales are corralled in a tight cove for young men to wade out into less than waist high water and slaughter defenseless whales as a test of “manhood”. Why not giving a young man a knife, food for a week and to brave the blizzard and to kill a kodiak? Wading out in water and killing small whales at your feet is like walking into a pen of puppies and opening up on them with a small handgun. Somehow that is supposed to make you “a man”. Somehow it is supposed to make you and your parents proud.

And for that reason governments and anti-whaling activists include the Inuit.

Labels are giving to this proud and resilient race which have survived freezing temperatures and little food. But today, Inuits have taken on the more modern approach to living and honestly no longer need to hunt endangered whales for the reason of survival alone.

On the scientific side, whales are being discovered to be sentient creatures and having many social traits like our own,

among many other things. More and more whales are becoming less of a food source and more of a friend. A creature with intelligence considered second only to us. And yet we have just begun to understand them. The recent discoveries are amazing: the training of their young, the use of neutrino waves to communicate at long distances, the transformation of their feces that becomes a nutrient rich mixture that converts nitrogen into for microscopic animals and begins the food chain.

If men live only by the land and that is how they survive, I can understand the taking of animals to live. That is how the animal kingdom does it. But where a culture changes and no longer relies on subsistence day-to-day, I think that life style needs to be reviewed and honestly.

We have made many wrongs as a species, such as slavery and the extinction of other races that do not agree with our way of thinking. And yet, there comes a time, when our knowledge for survival allows us to survive way beyond our needs. It is then that we have to become the caretakers of this very small planet and realize the delicate balance of life. It does not mean that we pay less respect for the old ways, but pave the way for the new. And find a way to keep certain traditions alive, which teach our children the value of living and our commonality with all life.

Japan consumes 33 percent of the world’s fish catch,

but latest figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries show that the fishing haul from oceans around the archipelago has fallen 46 percent in ten years. While the ocean is warming, the fish are moving north to colder waters and the catch from the Sea of Japan has fallen by an alarming 62 percent since 1990.

So guess what? Japan goes to other areas to fish and slaughter whales.

Here are recent facts that have occurred in the last year alone with Japan: Read the rest of this entry »

One of the Japanese Officials bowing in apology for accepting whale meat as a gift.

In an island country once known for its honor and integrity, it is unfortunate to watch its demise over whale meat.

As discovered and reported by Japanese Whale activists, the Japan Fishing Agency has finally admitted to receiving “gifts” from private companies contracted by the government to slaughter whales.

The Japan Fishing Agency is that part of the Japanese government responsible for research documenting the sustainability of continued whaling and providing scientific research to the IWC from which the commission bases its laws.

Read the rest of this entry »

Greenpeace said in a press release Wednesday that Governments need to look beyond a legal bid to stop Japan whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

How does my headline connect with the next statement? Well, for one part of the demise is not in favor of Whales. You see, taking Japan to International Court is not a simple process; during the span of 2-3 years many whales would lose their lives to Japanese whalers. And the Japanese would be happy to go to court because they would drag the system out as long as possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

JAPANESE whalers have radically changed their plans this summer, doubling the area of the Southern Ocean in which they say they may hunt.

The change, notified to the International Whaling Commission, will make it more difficult for anti-whaling activists to find the whalers.

Japan’s self-awarded scientific permit for 2010-11 gives the whaling fleet millions of square kilometres of ocean south of Australia in which to hunt, as well as south of New Zealand.

In a recent post in the DAILY YOMIURI, Joji Morishita from the Japan Fisheries Agency stated:

Read the rest of this entry »

With Japan whalers now approaching the southern ocean, they may have some more onlookers they haven’t counted on – the New Zealand Navy!

“The Green Party today welcomed the announcement the New Zealand Government will be joining Australia as a third party intervener in their whaling case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“The Government has made a tactical decision to support Australia’s (anti-whaling) case to the ICJ by allowing them to have an additional friendly judge hearing the case,” said Oceans spokesperson for the Green Party, Gareth Hughes. “

What this means is that the New Zealand’s Navy can act as independent observers of Japan’s Whale Hunt and will oversee the safety of the protest vessels. Additionally, if you didn’t know, Japan has added armed soldiers on to their whaling vessels. Their comment on the issue was “to protect their ships from unauthorized boarders”.

Any time you introduce firearms into any equation where there is potential human conflict, you invite trouble. The point is, Japan continues to hunt these magnificent endangered whales, with the excuse that their research tells them that what they harvest is still “sustainable”, meaning that there are still enough whales to not be endangered as a species.

My question is, how do the Japanese really know what “sustainable” means when they have already depleted their own seas? They are now in international waters, hunting whales illegally under the guise of research, when I have read and posted the facts from their own JAPAN TIMES, that they are selling the meat to villagers? Add to the fact that they are paying Iceland to hunt whales and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know “something is rotten in Denmark!”

I am really hoping that the protest ships will be safe and also cut the amount of whaling down greatly.

I look forward to your comments on this.

With Japanese Whalers now enroute to Antarctica, the world begins to gear up and watch a drama unfold.

Silently floating between the powers that decide their fate, whales are unarmed and defenseless.

Only in recent years has man just begun to understand these magnificent creatures and, as such, have begun to realize the natural treasure about to be destroyed.

Read the rest of this entry »

BECAUSE THEY CAN!

Women who have gone through menopause are not alone in living far past their ability to reproduce. This trait also been documented among killer whales and pilot whales.

You see, whales and humans live in family groups, and, over time, females develop an increasing stake in helping raise the offspring of others in their community.

The work, provides a supplemental explanation to the grandmother hypothesis (Cant & Johnsone), which suggests that evolution favored older women who used their knowledge and experience to benefit their relatives’ children.

But once a female has offspring and those offspring have bred their own, all within the same community, it becomes more advantageous for the female to help raise those offspring than to continue having her own children, Cant and Johnstone said.

Their new work will be published in the Dec. 22 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The whales’ story…

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It turns out that the wavelength of neutrino oscillations is about the same as the wavelength of whale songs.

That fortunate cosmic coincidence has led to a collaboration between particle physicists and biophysicists. To quote the CERN press release as quoted by Charles Day

“European astroparticle physicists are developing together KM3NeT, a large undersea neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean, dedicated to tracking neutrinos from astronomical sources. The deployment of deep sea neutrino detection lines for current experiments such as Antarès in France, Nemo in Italy and Nestor in Greece has opened up the possibility of also installing monitoring devices for the permanent study of the deep sea environment: studies of ocean currents, of bioluminescence, of fauna and of seismic activity.”

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