Whale Welfare

'To live will be an awfully big adventure'

~J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan


I named my blog ' A Whale Of An Idea' because I absolutely adore whales. Humpback whales, Orca whales, Blue whales, Northern Right whales, Bowhead whales, Gray whales, Minke whales, and more. I just love whales!

So you can probably imagine how entirely outraged I was when I found out that whales are hunted for their meat and other body parts! The oil from their bodies has been used to make lipstick, margarine, and shoe polish! And their blubber is used to make the oil in lamps and candles and soaps!-wait, it gets worse.....

In the 9th century the terrible practice of hunting whales began, and Spain undertook the first organized whale hunt. By the 20th century, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, the United States, Norway, France, Germany, and Britain had all begun to kill large numbers of this poor and innocent creature! Because of this, certain species of whales were hunted so much that their numbers had began to decline, and there were fewer whales then there had been before. 

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was formed in 1946 to address the growing threats to whales. They decided to create three categories: Commercial, Scientific, and Aboriginal Subsistence.

-With Commercial Whaling, whales are killed for their meat and parts!

-For Scientific Whaling, the whales are killed so that they can be studied, catalogued, and their information put into research!

-Aboriginal Subsistence is the whaling carried out by native cultures, such as the Native Americans in the United States, and these groups of people are given certain rights to hunt whales based upon their cultural history and whale meat dependence.

Because of the danger of extinction facing many whale species, the IWC voted to suspend all commercial whaling beginning in the year 1986, but despite this international agreement, several countries, including Norway, Iceland, and Japan, have continued killing whales and selling their meat and parts!

Whales are most often killed using a weapon called a harpoon, which has a grenade attached to it so that it explodes when the harpoon enters the body of the whale. It can take a very long time for some whales to die, which can cause additional suffering for the poor creature - and for what? So that some wealthy person can wear whale-skin boots?!

I honestly have no idea how someone could be so cruel as to let harmless mammals die!!!!!!!! We need to do something about this- and now!

'If not us, who? If not now, when?'

'Be the change you wish to see in the world'
~Gandhi

Random Fact: did you know that mature male humpback whales sing? The produce the longest, most complex sound sequence of any animal, with each song lasting up to 30 minutes! To sing, the whale vibrates air inside itself, but exactly how is not known, for whales do not have vocal cords!

Also, did you know that the North Atlantic Right whale is the most endangered large whale in the world, and there are less than 350 of them surviving today! It got its name, the 'right' whale, because it was said to be the 'right' whale to catch, due to its slow speed and tendency to stay close to the surface.

    Picture by Humpback stellwagen edit.jpg

                                     This is a Humpback Whale! Incredible, right?