The populations of whales and dolphins are decreasing, fast. The name of whaling isn’t known worldwide, yet, somethings need to change, soon. Whaling is something that needs to be heard about, these innocent whales are being punished, for being in their own habitat. Harpooning is a serious business, it is the process of killing whales. Harpooners have a large, and sharp tool that they throw into the water in hope to catch a whale, if they do catch a whale, it bleeds to death, making that part of the ocean a dark red. There is something wrong about the picture when so many people have jobs to go out into the treacherous sea, only to risk their lives day and night, to most of the time, not even come back with any food for their community. On most occasions, people need to stop hunting these innocent whales because the population of whales is decreasing, there are replacement options for the jobs of whaling, and the whale meat and oil, and the process of killing a whale is extremely cruel and inhumane.

One main reason why it is so bad to continue whaling is that whales are becoming endangered. Since whales are so large, they take a longer time to reproduce, making their rate decrease slowly, it doesn’t matter if you kill three whales a year, or three million. The people of Japan kill 1,000 minke whales each year for science research, as well as 100 endangered humpback and fin whales. This means that of all the places that are killing whales traditionally and annually need to stop because the population of whales are dramatically decreasing. Also, about 18-thousand dall’s porpoise are killed each year off Northern Japan. This proves that Japan and all of the other places that are continuing to hunt whales are rapidly bringing the endangered population of our beautiful marine life down to an extinct population. An article called “The Hypocritical Whaling Debate” from the Bloomberg View said “950 whales have been taken in recent years, but about 140 of them where minke whales.” As well as that, “Japan’s research on roughly 500 whales yearly is just a cloak of legitimacy.” These represent how many whales are being killed, and they are becoming harmfully endangered because of the large rate that people are continuing to kill whales at. Not only is whale meat inhuman, whale meat can be extremely harmful.

Second of all, the whale meat and oil isn’t needed anymore not only because the meat is bad for you, but because there are replacements. Eating whale meat can give you many health risks, such as the chemical mercury, which is found in many fish. Mercury can give you bad sicknesses, and has the potential to cause death if eaten too much. In fact, mercury can cause memory loss, hair loss, fatigue, depression, bad concentration, headaches, and heart disease. As well as all of these possible consequences from eating whale meat, whale meat and oil is not needed for the worlds economy; we don’t need whale meat, and whale oil has other replacements. Also, there are other job opportunities that people can have instead of killing whales. According to an article from theaustralian.com called “Something Fishey in Whaling Debate” said: “Only a few hundred jobs are for whaling.” This means that there are other options for whaling jobs that people don't take under consideration.

Even though whale meat is considered a delicacy to some people, if they eat whale meat on a regular basis, they have the potential to get severely sick. On the other hand, some people only eat whale meat on a special occasion, in this case, thinking that eating a whale once in a while would be fine. But, what they don't realize is that if everybody had whale meat once a year, wouldn’t that still require the killing of whales? Why would you risk a population of innocent animals going extinct when there are plenty of other animals that aren't endangered that they can devour instead?

Lastly, the process of killing a whale is extremely inhumane and cruel. According to an article called “The Cruelty of Whaling,” by Dr. Lillie, a ships physician on an Antarctic whaling expedition, she explained what she saw. “If we can imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears stuck into its stomach, and being made pull a butchers truck through London while it pours its blood into the gutter, we shall have the present method of killing. The gunners themselves admit that if whales could scream, the industry would stop, for nobody would be able to stand it.” This article demonstrates the view of killing a whale, and how awful it is to see this. Whales are highly intelligent and have extremely complex social lives. This means that since it takes up to 35 minutes for a whale to actually die after it has been harpooned, whaling is extremely cruel. Furthermore, after a whale or dolphin has been harpooned, it can escape with a big, open wound in its back, from this, it sinks to the bottom and bleeds to death. A perfect, big, and beautiful creature killed, and wasted for no good reason. Even when a direct hit is made, which doesn’t always happen, the explosive often fails to kill the whale right away. Most Japanese whaling ships report that only 70% of whales are killed within their first shot.

Overall, the cruel things that are happening all around the world such as whaling has to be recognized and taken under control. This whaling debate is inhumane for three main reasons;  it is cruel to whales, the meat is not needed, and it does not greatly influence the world’s economy. An example of what we should start to do was represented by Paul Watson, he was one of the first people to start the anti-whaling movement in the 1970’s. He has helped to bring numbers of illegal whale fishers down since then. Even though this has helped a lot, it hasn’t helped enough to stop whaling worldwide. Besides that, whaling is illegal! According to a website called Debate.org, “All commercial whaling is illegal. Whaling has been illegal since 1986 and has remained so to the present day.” An article called “Whaling” explained how whaling is a bad thing that is continuing to occur for multiple different reasons. How would you like it if all of a sudden you were shot by an unknown creature, bled all over your house, and then had your spinal chord chopped off? Now that you understand the importance of stopping the cruel whaling that is continuing to happen around the world, help us stop the illegal fishing population!