The Whale Man

Japan argues its whaling is needed for scientific reasons.
I think the only research being done by Japan is marketing research and product development. There certainly is no scientific research. They have not published a single peer review paper in 20 years. Nobody buys their argument—it's just a loophole to allow them to carry on commercial whaling.

At this week's meeting, the United States and some other governments are proposing a compromise be worked out to prevent Japan from dropping out of the IWC.
If Japan would drop out of the IWC, I think it would be a good thing. It would become a renegade nation, and we will be even more aggressive with them.

What's needed to convince Japan, Norway and Iceland to change their whaling policies?
These countries are going to either voluntarily come to their senses, or else nature will deal a hand for them and the whole thing will collapse. I mean, right now, the Norwegians and Japanese are actually talking about taking massive amounts of plankton out of the Antarctica ecosystem to turn into a protein base for livestock without any research being done on what kind of impact that will have on whales, fish and global warming. When we start exploiting the very foundation of marine ecosystems and pulling it out of the system, we are going to have severe problems. Basically, we are literally eating this planet to death.

You must be concerned about the effects that climate change will have on the oceans.
I was concerned about global warming in 1975, and everybody said we were nuts. Right now, governments are acting incredibly irresponsibly. They have legions of scientists that I call biostitutes that justify all their political excesses. They are raping the world's oceans, and use the scientists to justify what they are doing. We predicted the demise of the cod fisheries in the North Atlantic 20 years before it happened. And up to the very day it collapsed, the scientists for the Canadian government said there is absolutely no danger, it is sustainable and it's the most well-regulated fishery in the world. Then, bang, it collapsed. These people have proven over and over again that they have no idea what they are talking about.

© 2008