What are humpback whales hunted for?

Answer 1

Who knows? The Japanese insist on doing it, and have at least 5000 tonnes of whale meat frozen, because nobody wants to eat it. It's insane. They are putting it in school lunches, what next? dog food and fertilizer? Hopefully they will realize that there's more money to be made in whale watching than in this senseless, cruel slaughter.

Their reason "scientific research" is laughable and patently dishonest. You can learn a lot more about these creatures while they are alive, and you don't need to kill them to take tissue samples. Leave these magnificent creatures alone!

I AGREE!!!!!!!

Answer 2

In today's times, humpback whales are most likely hunted only for sport. Whale oil is rarely ever used for practical purposes when other cheaper alternatives are available. Aside from sport, meat of a whale is considered a delicacy to eat.

Answer 3

Starting why before the modern era of whaling, Whales were generally killed to supply food and valuable oil to countries, towns, villages and/or tribes of people. The ancient arts of whaling have become a cultural tradition to all the countries that currently kill whales today. This is one of the two key reasons with another minor one why countries today kill whales. The key reason why whales are hunted nowadays is generally the cultural significance and for 'scientific purposes'. However all the nations apart from the Faroe Islands would only admit the reason why they kill whales is for scientific purposes but the general populations do say that Whaling has become and should be maintained as a cultural tradition to millions of people. The third minor purpose which why Whales are killed is to generally supply food for communities. The reason why this is a minor reason is that Whaling is a costly industry which generally doesn't profits, which is a reason why whaling should be stopped and new laws should be put into place, and enforced to protect the whales.

The most famous country that kills whales for 'scientific research' is Japan. In 1986, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling to allow stocks to replenish. However, this on-going ban allows member nations to grant themselves special permits to kill whales for scientific research, with the proviso that the whale meat is utilised following data collection. Only Japan holds a special permit. Its current research programme, which started in 2000 and is run by the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), proposes to kill more than 1000 whales a year in the Antarctic and the western north Pacific. The stated objectives are to determine the population structure and feeding habits of several whale species, including endangered fin and sei whales, in order to "manage" stocks.

The scientific impact of the research is also limited. Relatively little research is published in international peer-reviewed journals, compared with research programmes on other marine mammals such as dolphins. According to the ICR, scientific whaling has produced 152 publications in peer-reviewed journals since 1994. However, just 58 of these papers were published in international journals. The rest were IWC reports or articles published in domestic journals, largely in Japanese. Most of the findings are not circulated among the wider scientific community, and the failure to subject papers to impartial review renders the value of much of this literature questionable.

Whether the results from scientific whaling are useful for stock management has also been questioned. The Scientific Committee of the IWC has explicitly stated that the results generated by the Japanese Whale Research Program in the Antarctic (JARPA) "were not required for management". Independent research shows that the data may overestimate whale abundance by up to 80 per cent (Marine Ecology Progress Series, vol 242, p 295).

Finally, given that there is considerable variation in the capacity of different whale populations to recover from stock depletion (Marine Mammal Science, vol 24, p 183), the value of the research for understanding populations outside the Antarctic and western north Pacific - which may one day be reconsidered for commercial whaling - is limited. This fundamentally undermines the justification for scientific whaling.

Whaling exists today for the same reason that all other farming, harvesting, fishing, hunting and manufacturing exist. There is a market or demand for the products reaped. People who have lived their entire lives in remote, almost inaccessible fishing villages in Newfoundland or Iceland or Norway, must eat every day, just like you and I, and in many cases this is the only way of livelihood known. People in this profession are not likely to suddenly move to Toronto or New York or Stockholm and become bankers, investment councillors or other types of thieves, but will likely live out their lives as fishermen and fisherwomen. As people become less vain, less arrogant and more intelligent, the demand for diminishing products will reduce, as will the desire of the offspring of people in these professions to continue. Even though it is not used as much today as it used to have been, whale oil is used for a few things nowadays.

Answer 4

Their oil refined from the blubber is used in many industries because of its very fine quality, Industries like cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, artists oils, watchmaking etc, the list is endless.

Answer 5

whales are hunted because they make lots of money and they can be amde into other things like lipstick, candles , lamp oil ect ect

Answer 6

Mainly minke, but DNA tests on "minke whale meat" sold in Japan show it to be from dolphins, blue whales, and fin whales, too.

Answer 7

southern right, humpback, blue, fin, sperm and sei whales