Japanese scientific whaling: the research program that does for marine biology what Unit 731 did for medical science!

Well its been over a year... lots going on.

But this is important. We had a humpback whale off of Quoin Island the other day. It came into Gladstone Harbor and cavorted around, apparently chasing mackerel. I missed the sight, but for everyone who saw it it was an amazing event.

Whales migrate up and down the coast here, and whale watching is a major source of tourism income. So now they are heading south to the Antarctic.

Which brings us to the annual Japanese "scientific" whale hunt. How the apologists for this have the nerve to say that this is "research" is utterly beyond me. It is a thinly disguised commercial whale hunt, intended only to keep the few remaining whaling vessels and whalers employed. At least our new government (thanks Kev and Peter) have the balls to call the japs out on this; Howard was a spineless little weasel who never took a stand on the issue.

So our politicians are starting to address the issue. But we can help. Write to the Japanese ambassador of your country and express your opinion.

Boycott Japanese products. Buy a Hyundai (I did). They are comparable quality and the Koreans (for all their strange eating habits) do not go around harpooning large, intelligent marine mammals in the name of scientific research. Don't buy your kids that new Playstation or Wii or whatever. (Actually don't buy an Xbox either, have them perhaps go outside and play, they will be less obese in later life...)

But this is only a start. Greenpeace had the brilliant inspiration of naming a whale to be tracked, and set up a site to vote on the name. Even more brilliantly, someone in the online community came up with the name "Mr Splashy Pants". I mean, you could probably get away with killing Humphrey or whatever other names, but Mr Splashy Pants? No.

We can go further though. We need to ridicule the idea that Japanese whaling is in any way scientific. And the way to do that is to call attention to some earlier Japanese "scientific research", and to link it indelibly in peoples minds with the present day scientific program.

So, let me introduce you to a prewar Japanese research program, Unit 731. Without going into the gory details (you can read about it in the Wikipedia article), it involved some pretty unpleasant experiments on live human beings. Suffice to say that the suffering inflicted on those involved at the time was probably comparable to that of the whales being harpooned in this present day scientific program. The Japanese were barbaric back then and they have clearly not changed much in the intervening years.

Anyway, gloves off. The new slogan:

Japanese scientific whaling: the research program that does for marine biology what Unit 731 did for medical science!


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