On July 28 this year, a report was released that claimed 16 members of a Japanese whaling crew were killed by orcas in the Southern Ocean.
The story went viral.
With over 670 000 shares on social networking site Facebook, the chilling details of the tragedy were quickly accepted by the myopic public as fact.
” … The swimming crew members were … ferociously attacked by a school of killer whales, that decimated a large number of the crew within moments,” reports World News Daily. “The water was red with blood, there were bodies everywhere.”
The original controversial headline. Source: World News Daily Report
If you’re thinking something smells fishy here, you’d be right.
The article turned out to be a hoax, but the scathing response from the public was entirely authentic. The comments lacked the sympathy expected of such a human tragedy, and reeked of callousness, insensitivity and unbridled racism.
So where is all this acrimony bubbling up from? Certainly not the statistics. In the 2012/2013 season, Japan caught and killed 848 whales (incidentally, none of which were orcas). However, the International Whaling Commission estimates that “308,000 whales and dolphins die annually due to entanglement in fishing gear, and more still in marine debris.” These whales die slow and painful deaths from lacerations, infections, drowning and starvation.
The IWC’s full dataset on recent catches taken by commercial, aboriginal and scientific permit whaling is available here.
Looking at the evidence it seems that more whales are killed each year due to global demand for tuna mayo sandwiches than Japan’s whale hunts.
Image: Humpback whale entangled in pot gear off W. Australia, Department of Environment and Conservation.
Despite the hate-speech, it seems that the Japanese public aren’t even that interested in eating whale. Of 1211.9 tons of whale meat that were sent to the public auctions which ended in March 2012, the ICR (Institute of Cetacean Research) were only able to sell some 303.1 tons. Three-quarters of the available meat, 908.8 tons, was left unsold. In addition, whale meat has been found to have highly toxic levels of methyl-mercury, making it less than desirable for consumption.
As an aside, while WND may not have predicted the ruthless response of its readers, the article doesn’t really do the orcas any favours either. Despite their ‘killer’ reputation, no human has ever been killed by an orca in the wild (orcas in captivity are another issue which we will discuss here next week).
Tell us what you think. Did you see the article? What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of political satire to discuss controversial science? Do you think commercial whaling can ever be conducted sustainably or should the moratorium be upheld indefinitely?
The Maelstrom 