According to an article entitled, "Japan temporarily suspends Antarctic whaling" I found at a Chinese news agency ( Xinhua News Agency) Japan apparently is only suspending its Antarctic whaling operations, and not stopping them! We should have guessed that this was going to happen. In the article I found this statement,
"The Japanese whalers plan to resume hunting when conditions are deemed safe." This means that they will resume this awful killing when the Sea Shepard society runs out of finances or the capacity to interrupt the Japanese whaling fleet. (sourcehttp://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-02/17/c_13736435.htm)
Why aren't nation states willing to get involved in this killing of whales? The Japanese say they are involved in "scientific research" as a cover for their commercial whaling activities. Not only is Japan acting in
see: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/commercial-whaling-spanning-the-globe-from-ja/blog/32738 , To see a list of countries which are engaged in whaling at the present time (in defiance of international law) please click on the following link: http://www.whales.org.au/history/kill.html
At the following website I found the best estimate of how many whales are actually left on our Planet:
http://iwcoffice.org/conservation/estimate.htm#table If countries allow Whales to go extinct with their greed and selfishness, this certainly says a great deal about us as a species doesn't it?? The extinction of such an important species of Whales could have devasting implications for other life in the ocean and our own survival as a species.
Dr Ray Gambell who is the International Whaling Commission's Secretary stated this regarding the implications pertaining to the extinction of all whales on this planet:
" We are concerned about all the changes to the environment that we're beginning to see, such as climate change, ozone depletion, pollution. All of these things are having an impact on the oceans but it is impossible to predict at this time just what the effect will be on whales. By the same token, if whales, for whatever reason, were no longer in the ocean, their impact on all the other organisms with which they interact is so complicated that we can scarcely ask what will happen." (source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/forum/817116.stm )
" We are concerned about all the changes to the environment that we're beginning to see, such as climate change, ozone depletion, pollution. All of these things are having an impact on the oceans but it is impossible to predict at this time just what the effect will be on whales. By the same token, if whales, for whatever reason, were no longer in the ocean, their impact on all the other organisms with which they interact is so complicated that we can scarcely ask what will happen." (source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/forum/817116.stm )
