Dolphin in Japan

¶ … Environmental Ethics

The Japanese Dolphin Harvest

In Japan, dolphin and whale meat have been traditional food for many centuries. In Western culture, dolphin and whale have come to be regarded with much greater respect and consideration, largely because of the complexity of their family structure, their sophisticated communications, and their capacity for interspecies social relationships and bonding with human beings. In that light, it is a horrible moral atrocity that the Japanese brutally trap and slaughter terrorized intelligent and sentient creatures such as dolphin with absolutely no regard for their suffering. According to one account:

"In a typical hunt the fishermen pursue pods of dolphins across open seas, banging metal poles together beneath the water to confuse their hypersensitive sonar. The exhausted animals are driven into a large cove sealed off by nets to stop them escaping and dragged backwards into secluded inlets the following morning to be butchered with knives and spears."

However, as brutal as the spectacle appears to us, the Japanese regard their slaughter of dolphin much the same as North Americans have traditionally raised cattle for slaughter and hunted game for both food and sport. North Americans also hunted bison to extinction, hunted whale well into the 20th century, and still fish for tuna and other game fish. The fact that we have greater sympathy for certain species of animals seems unfair, even racist, to the Japanese whose way of life depends of dolphin fishing:

"I think we are the victims of a form of racism & #8230; Westerners slaughter cattle and other animals in the most inhumane ways imaginable, but no one says a word. Why is it that only Japan gets this kind of treatment?"

Ultimately, it is difficult to impose Western moral values about the treatment of animals except as it is possible to do with geopolitical "carrots." At the same time, it may be a lesson in perspective given that pigs are smarter than dogs and no less appreciative of human companionship than dogs when befriended instead of raised somewhat inhumanely and slaughtered for food.

The Plight of the Polar Bear

According to environmental experts like Kassie Siegel of the Centre for Biological Diversity, based in California, the natural habitat of the Polar Bear is disappearing too fast to sustain the species in the wild for much longer. Global climate change has caused so much of the Arctic ice to melt that Polar bears are unable to pursue enough food to maintain a healthy body weight, reproduce, or nourish their cubs to adulthood.

Unfortunately, there may be little that can be done for the Polar Bear beyond preserving the species in captivity unless there is a dramatic increase in technology capable of reversing climate change. Andrew Derocher of the University of Alberta and head of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Polar Bear Specialist Group suggests,

"There is no easy conservation fix…without stabilizing the climate by taking serious and urgent action on climate change, I don't see a future for polar bears at all."