Whaling

Benjamin Perez-Garcia
Miss Kari Laux
9th Grade English
October 25, 2012
Whaling
It is a fact that in Japan during 2004 and 2005 more than six-hundred whales, were killed (“Secretariat & IWC website”). This puts whales in a very dangerous position, because they are staying without an environment to live in, and also there are some species of whales that are becoming extinct, such as theBlue whale or the Right whale. This problem is caused because some cultures allow whaling and they are doing nothing to stop or even reduce the problem. This problem has caused dramatic changes to their specific environment. Take for example the Orca or Killer whale. If the Orca becomes extinct, the amount of the species it feeds on would increase in a considerable number. Consider the polarbear. If the polar bear population increases, the species they mainly feed on would decrease in number because there are more predators. This would create a change in the food chain that would dramatically affect the environment.
Whaling is an important global matter and it is banned by the International Whaling Commission. Despite this ban, in some places, there are people that kill whales withcommercial purposes, because it is well know that some products are made with whale parts such as shampoos or perfumes, and they still use them even though there are some synthetic alternatives (Foster). Furthermore, because this is still being done, the problem expands to a new area, the black market. This brings lots of problems, because selling or buying things from the black market is illegal.People that want to buy things from it are very wealthy, so they are very powerful; therefore they are very difficult to catch. The worldwide threat to the existence of whales can be stopped by introducing efficient legislation, organizing publicity campaigns and supporting action groups.
Today’s legislations are not efficient enough and this is because there are countries that have foundloopholes in these laws. Therefore they can continue whaling without any punishment. Current law created in 1986, the IWC instituted an indefinite ban on commercial whale (Fears). However countries such as Japan and Norway have not honored the ban. There are also some international treaties such as CITES, that protect all the wild animals and plants that are in international trade. It is designed topromote conservation of endangered species. There are three categories of protection under the treaty. Species listed in Appendix I are threatened with extinction and are or may be affected by trade. Almost all the whales are listened in this category.
New legislations should end the excessive amount of attacks that some countries are doing to these marine mammals. A new law that would help whaleswould be, any country that is participating in the haunting of endangered marine mammals would get a fine. The fine amount would depend on the amount of damage it is doing to the certain species and on the amount of damage it is doing to the environment. Another efficient law that would work would be one that would fine countries that participate in whaling, but in an indirect way, like the onesthat buy or trade these animals. Yes, these laws are similar, but this would prevent people finding loopholes that countries could use for their convenience.
These laws would make this business, not profitable because of the amount of fines they would have. Also, they would discourage other countries to participate in the whaling business. These laws could make the difference between today andhow it could be tomorrow in the lives of these animals.
Another strategy to solve this problem could be publicity campaigns. History has taught people that publicity is one of the strongest weapons someone has to solve a worldwide problem. Publicity is such a good weapon because it moves people. The best example for this is one of the latest publicity campaigns “Kony 2012”. Even though Kony has...