[dino_bobba_renno]

$1:

truth is irrelevant

Paul Watson. 1993. Earthforce! An Earth Warrior’s Guide to Strategy


Just have to love eco-nutjobs.

[DrCaleb]

jeff744 jeff744:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

jeff744 jeff744:

Actually, they have found that every hunted population is growing and the hunts are actually a good way of measuring the current whale populations.

How many offspring do they have? Where do they breed and birth? How long do they live? What is their likelihood of growing to adulthood? Using that information, what is the likely population that can be culled sustainably?

All but the last question cannot be answered by killing the animals.

1 and 2 can be answered by killing, killing can also tell us the general health of a pod, if there are any new things entering their diet, how they adapt to climate change, and a variety of other useful facts.

How do you know how many offspring a whale had if it's dead and no noger bearing offspring? How do you know where they breed and where they birth if they are dead? How do you know how long they naturally live, if they are dead?

How can you determine the healthy population for them, if these hings are not known?

[DrCaleb]

jeff744 jeff744:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

So, do you have any figures to back up those numbers? Oh, wait, that's what Japan is supposed to 'research' riiiight. We called for a moratorium on Caribou hunting in Labrador, because we know populations are declining. But we hav eno clue as to the health of whale populations, so we have no idea what we are doing to them. Google 'Orange Roughy' for a little hint as to what we can do when we think with out stomachs.

Besides, there are other ways for Japanese to get protein that doesn't involve animals with intellect and feelings.

http://iwcoffice.org/conservation/estimate.htm

IWC themselves agree.

$1:

The Commission is unable to to provide reliable estimates at the present time. A major review is underway by the Scientific Committee.

So, they don't even believe their 'estimates'.

[peck420]

It's not that they don't believe their own estimate, it's that their listed estimate is out of date (82-89) and they need to conduct a current study.

What do they hunt whales for anyways? Food or tradition?

What do we get from whales that can't be derived elsewhere?

[PublicAnimalNo9]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

How many offspring do they have? Where do they breed and birth? How long do they live?

Their lifespan is something I'd be quite interested in learning. Some years ago, a whale washed up on the west coast(or beached itself, can't remember off-hand). Before the local FN group had at it, some scientists showed up to examine and study the corpse. At one point, they found a harpoon head of a kind that hadn't been used by west coast natives in over 700 years.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

peck420 peck420:

It's not that they don't believe their own estimate, it's that their listed estimate is out of date (82-89) and they need to conduct a current study.

If you're referring to the ICW, their latest estimate is from 2000, that showed a minimum estimated population of 500,000 Minke whales world wide.

[DrCaleb]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

So, do you have any figures to back up those numbers? Oh, wait, that's what Japan is supposed to 'research' riiiight. We called for a moratorium on Caribou hunting in Labrador, because we know populations are declining. But we hav eno clue as to the health of whale populations, so we have no idea what we are doing to them. Google 'Orange Roughy' for a little hint as to what we can do when we think with out stomachs.

The population numbers come from the ICW itself. Their initial estimate in the 90's was a southern population of Minke whales around 760,000. IN 2000 they revised that figure substantially to around 380,000. Add that to the 106,000 or so in the northeast Atlantic and we have a population of around 500,000 individuals. That doesn't include numbers from the north Pacific since there's no current estimate.

And from their own site, the population on Minke in the southern hemisphere - "The Commission is unable to to provide reliable estimates at the present time. A major review is underway by the Scientific Committee."

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

[
Certainly nations like Canada and the US as well as much of Europe have no need for whale meat due to the huge expanses of land available for crops and cattle. But who are we to force our moral values of what should be food, onto others?

But, we do! In the North, sometimes there are no other choices. Seal, caribou, seal, caribou, bear, whale, seal, caribou, char. Or $40 for a gallon of cow milk, $9 for lettuce. . . . if there were year round roads that they could get regular shipments of fresh food, then I'd rail against the unnessecary killing too.

As I said before, there are other ways for Japanese to get protien. They don't need whale to fortify their diet, they eat it out of tradition. I'm not trying to force anyone to my moral values, I'm trying to convince them it's better all around.

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

[
Just as PETA has no right to tell me what I can and can't eat, you don't have that right to tell others. You may not like it, heck I don't necessarily agree with whale hunting either, but I've told enough people to "fuck off" when it comes to our seal hunts it would be hypocritical of me to qvetch at someone else's eating habits. As long as the species being hunted aren't endangered, then closely monitored and regulated commercial hunts should be permitted, and it looks like the ICW could swing back in that direction.

I don't see the hipocracy. Seals and whales are sometimes the only meat available to parts of our population. Same with parts of Iceland and Norway.

The hipocracy lies in Japan remaining a member of the IWC, and hunting whale meat under the guise of research that never happens. Stop hunting whales, or leave the IWC and remove the pretention. Or, actually do research.

{humour}
In California, the hippies decided to fight the system from within, join government and protected seals. So now, there are great white sharks in the waters off California because of the extra prey. So the hippies protected the sharks too. Now the sharks are eating the hippies as they surf, and the cycle of life is complete. {/humour}

[peck420]

Can you send me a link please?

Per the link posted previsouly (http://iwcoffice.org/conservation/estimate.htm):
(sorry for the craptastic formatting: they all go year of estimate/point estimate/95% confidence levels)

Minke Whales:
Southern Hemisphere
1982/83 - 1988/89
761,000
510,000 - 1,140,000

Current The Commission is unable to to provide reliable estimates at the present time. A major review is underway by the Scientific Committee.

North Atlantic
(Central & Northeastern)
1996-2001
174,000
125,000 - 245,000


West Greenland
2005
10,800
3,600 - 32,400

North West Pacific and Okhotsk Sea
1989-90
25,000
12,800 - 48,600

In regards to the Southern Hemisphere (the largest Minke population) they have no current estimate (bolded section).

[DrCaleb]

peck420 peck420:

It's not that they don't believe their own estimate, it's that their listed estimate is out of date (82-89) and they need to conduct a current study.

What do they hunt whales for anyways? Food or tradition?

What do we get from whales that can't be derived elsewhere?

Perhaps they could use the Japanese figures . . .oh, yea.

They hunt mostly for tradition, in my understanding.

[DrCaleb]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

How many offspring do they have? Where do they breed and birth? How long do they live?

Their lifespan is something I'd be quite interested in learning. Some years ago, a whale washed up on the west coast(or beached itself, can't remember off-hand). Before the local FN group had at it, some scientists showed up to examine and study the corpse. At one point, they found a harpoon head of a kind that hadn't been used by west coast natives in over 700 years.

I recall that. I think the estimated age of that Blue Whale was 900 years. That's why I suggested googling 'orange roughy'. It's a species we suddenly discovered through drag netting (an abhornet practice). Suddenly there were megatons of fish, but really deep!

Turns out, they breed really slowly that far down. One fish has one or two offspring every few years or something. And they live for a couple hundred years. But we didn't know that till we reduced their population by 90%. Oops. Sorry about that.

We make some really bad decisions sometimes, and we need not 'manage the oceans', because the oceans were managing fine long before we came along. We need to manage our impact on them, so they'll be there when we need them. We f-ed up Blue Fin Tuna, Atlantic Cod, and so many other species, I feel we need to do the due dilligence before raping and pilliaging the sea in the future.

[jeff744]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

How do you know how many offspring a whale had if it's dead and no noger bearing offspring? How do you know where they breed and where they birth if they are dead? How do you know how long they naturally live, if they are dead?

How can you determine the healthy population for them, if these hings are not known?

If you catch one while pregnant (which would require a special whaling permit to actually kill during that season) it can show how many would have been born (not a smart way to determine it but still entirely valid method). The contents of a whales stomach can further narrow down the location of birthing/breeding significantly by looking for region specific foods. Natural life is next to impossible to determine unless we happen to come across one or have the patience to tag several hundred at birth and wait until they all die, otherwise all we have is best guess for any animal.

[DrCaleb]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

How do you know how many offspring a whale had if it's dead and no noger bearing offspring?

jeff744 jeff744:

If you catch one while pregnant (which would require a special whaling permit to actually kill during that season) it can show how many would have been born (not a smart way to determine it but still entirely valid method).

Not a valid method. If you catch a pregnant female, you have no information on how old she is, how often she got pregnant, therefore you have no idea how many offspring it has contributed to the population over it's lifetime. There is no information on how fast the population recovers, if an animal is taken for meat.

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

How do you know where they breed and where they birth if they are dead?

jeff744 jeff744:

The contents of a whales stomach can further narrow down the location of birthing/breeding significantly by looking for region specific foods.

Then you only know it's last meal. Since you know where you are, you know where they last ate. Whales like Elephants gestate over many months. It's eaten and moved on since mating. If you don't know how and where it mates, how can we know anything about it's reproductive cycle, and again how taking an animal for meat is recovered in the population?

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

How do you know how long they naturally live, if they are dead?

jeff744 jeff744:

Natural life is next to impossible to determine unless we happen to come across one or have the patience to tag several hundred at birth and wait until they all die, otherwise all we have is best guess for any animal.

It is not impossible. You tag the animal, and release it. You catch it again in the future, and look up when it was tagged. Patience is required. When you catch it, you notice changes in the animal; skin, teeth, barnacles. Eventually data will let us predict an age. Without all this data, we cannot know if the population is increasing, decreasing or even threatened with extinction. This is called 'research' and does not resemble Japanese style 'research'.

As we were discussing above, some Bowhead Whales have been estimated to be in the hundreds of years old.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ammal.html

[CDN_PATRIOT]

jeff744 jeff744:

Actually, they have found that every hunted population is growing and the hunts are actually a good way of measuring the current whale populations.

It's no wonder Caleb and Gunnair are all over you. With statements like the above quoted of yours, I kinda want to jump in too. I can't believe you posted something like that, much less believe it yourself.

-J.

[jeff744]

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

jeff744 jeff744:

Actually, they have found that every hunted population is growing and the hunts are actually a good way of measuring the current whale populations.

It's no wonder Caleb and Gunnair are all over you. With statements like the above quoted of yours, I kinda want to jump in too. I can't believe you posted something like that, much less believe it yourself.

-J.

If you go hunting for Moose all your life but you notice it is gradually getting harder to find them what will your assumption be if you are going to places known to have Moose every year? Or, what if you notice it is getting a lot easier to find them, getting increasingly easy every year?

[Gunnair]

jeff744 jeff744:

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

jeff744 jeff744:

Actually, they have found that every hunted population is growing and the hunts are actually a good way of measuring the current whale populations.

It's no wonder Caleb and Gunnair are all over you. With statements like the above quoted of yours, I kinda want to jump in too. I can't believe you posted something like that, much less believe it yourself.

-J.

If you go hunting for Moose all your life but you notice it is gradually getting harder to find them what will your assumption be if you are going to places known to have Moose every year? Or, what if you notice it is getting a lot easier to find them, getting increasingly easy every year?

You don't need to shoot the moose to figure that out. It can be done through observation, photography, radio tracking...