r/Cetacea • u/futurewildlifevet • Oct 19 '24
Why do some people say that whales decrease the population of fish that is fished for human consumption if whales have a very small throat and esophagus and cannot pass large fish that are the ones that are actually used for human consumption? Is it because they scare them away or consumption?
Dont know if this is a dumb question, but Ive been doing a lot of research on whale hunting in Norway and Japan and I went into the japanese governmental fisheries website and they have a document stating that whale hunting is good because they have to compete with whales for fish but thats not actually so true... is it? There is currently no scientific evidence for this so Im really confused as to why two whole governments of two different countries use this as an argument.
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u/overdriveandreverb Oct 19 '24
from what I have heard there seems to be a disconnect between the japanese governments obsession with whale hunting - that seems to be rooted in the post war period of food scarcity - and actual consumption. a lot of whales don't even eat fish and those who do also eat other animals. I bet the fisheries will find some evidence to back their practice up, I would rather rely on actual neutral scientists data which is not used to back a practice that nowadays is banned by nearly all countries. scaring away would not decrease numbers. norway is an oil rich country, japan is one of the most developed countries, both have no need to do this, both have long histories in whaling, but so did countries who banned the practice and as I said the actual root for japanese behaviour seems to be rather young in post war trauma. humans are the big overfishers, so the argument makes little sense to begin with. if there actually would not be enough fish, the numbers of the whales who rely on them would drop naturally. so the heroic story they try to spin is pretty much bs.