{"id":817,"date":"2016-10-24T12:20:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T12:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/uncategorized\/817\/10-good-reasons-to-protect-whales\/"},"modified":"2025-01-28T07:35:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T07:35:56","slug":"10-good-reasons-to-protect-whales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/blogs\/817\/10-good-reasons-to-protect-whales\/","title":{"rendered":"10 good reasons to protect whales"},"content":{"rendered":"
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All rights reserved<\/a>. Credit: Kate Davison<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Killing whales for food has been happening for millennia. But it was commercial whaling \u2013 turning whales into barrels of oil for profit \u2013 that led to the wholesale destruction of most of the world\u2019s populations of big whales.The loss of whales from our oceans is the same story as overfishing of big fish \u2013 sharks, tuna, cod and others. It\u2019s a tragedy for the species and has immense knock on effects across the ocean. We know that whales are important for the oceans, and we know that as long-lived, slow-growing animals they are much more susceptible to over-fishing than actual fish.<\/p>\n

But there is some good news for whales. We have seen many populations showing signs of recovery since hunting was stopped. Whales are being found in greater numbers and seem to be reclaiming habitats they\u2019ve been missing from for decades if not centuries. In the same way that recovering fish stocks generate cries of \u2018let us catch more!\u2019 from fishermen, the question now is \u2013 are some whales numerous enough that we can hunt them?<\/p>\n

Well, here are ten reasons why we\u00a0shouldn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We don\u2019t know how well whales are recovering, because we don\u2019t know how manythere once were<\/a>\u00a0or \u2018should be\u2019.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We are still learning about whales, amazingly \u2018new\u2019 species like the dwarf pygmy whale,\u00a0Omura\u2019s whale<\/a>, and species of\u00a0beaked whale<\/a>\u00a0have only been discovered the last few decades.<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We now know that some whales have and pass on forms of \u2018culture<\/a>\u2019, including humpbacks\u2019 songs and orcas\u2019 feeding strategies \u2013 whaling could have more impact on populations than sheer numbers.<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Whales are\u00a0necessary for healthy oceans<\/a>, mixing, distributing nutrients and helping deal with the impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n

5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Whales are full of\u00a0persistent toxins<\/a>, like mercury and PCBs. As long-lived and slow-growing animals they \u2018bioaccumulate\u2019 these in their blubber. This causes them problems when fighting disease and breeding, and can also makes them toxic if eaten.<\/p>\n

6)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We\u2019re killing whales indirectly every day \u2013 including\u00a0ship strikes<\/a>,\u00a0fisheries entanglement<\/a>,\u00a0military<\/a>\u00a0&\u00a0seismic testing<\/a>. \u00a0We are also displacing whales more and more, by industrial developments, destroying habitats, and filling the ocean with noise.<\/p>\n

7)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Whales don\u2019t understand national boundaries, and most species\u00a0migrate\u00a0<\/a>in and out of different countries\u2019 waters.<\/p>\n

8)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We don\u2019t know what the ongoing impacts of climate change on ocean life,\u00a0including whales<\/a>\u00a0and their prey, will be.<\/p>\n

9)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Commercial whaling,<\/a>\u00a0as with commercial hunting of virtually every large mammal or fish species has inevitably led to over-exploitation.<\/p>\n

10)\u00a0\u00a0 We simply don\u2019t need to. Commercial whaling in its hey-day was about oil production, not meat production. There is\u00a0no demand for whale meat<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and even where whale meat is sold to be eaten it\u2019s a peripheral, small and declining industry, and makes\u00a0no economic sense<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whales today live in degraded oceans, depleted and fractured populations, and face a growing barrage of human threats. Given all of that we have to treat any notion of \u2018recovery\u2019 in an extremely precautionary way.<\/p>\n

Commercial whaling is the one human threat to whales we can, and should, simply consign to history \u2013 the world\u2019s remaining whale populations have enough to contend with. So let\u2019s get on with talking about whale conservation instead.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n \t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tProtect the Oceans\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n Get Involved\n <\/a>\n \t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/section>\n\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Killing whales for food has been happening for millennia. But it was commercial whaling \u2013 turning whales into barrels of oil for profit \u2013 that led to the wholesale destruction of most of the world\u2019s populations of big whales.The loss of whales from our oceans is the same story as overfishing of big fish \u2013 sharks, tuna, cod and others. It\u2019s a tragedy for the species and has immense knock on effects across the ocean. We know that whales are important for the oceans, and we know that as long-lived, slow-growing animals they are much more susceptible to over-fishing than actual fish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":90,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[35,28],"p4-page-type":[48],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-protecttheenvironment","tag-water","tag-oceans","p4-page-type-blogs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56958,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions\/56958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}