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With everything in life, there are two sides and a benefit and a consequence. Whaling does have benefits but it also does have some severe and threatening consequences.

There are some benefits to it, here are them. Many indigenous people, such as the Intuits of Alaska, rely on whales for food and other materials to survive in such harsh environments. If whale populations are monitored carefully, it might be possible for whales to be sustainably harvested. Some regard minke whales as "pests", which the larger baleen whales are forced to compete with, therefore making it more difficult for them to recover. Some, like the Japanese and Icelandic, believe that whales are depleting stocks of important forage fish like capelin and herring, citing the fact that some whales eat tons of such fish every day.

With every benefit, there are consequences of it and they are. Comprehensive censuses have not been conducted on whale species being hunted, and therefore it is unknown how extensively their species have been depleted. When whales are removed from ecosystems, the entire balance is thrown off. Most whale meat contains levels of Mercury deemed unsafe by government regulations, and can lead to mercury poisoning in people who eat it regularly. Some view whales to have an intrinsic value to the world, which makes their killing immoral. There are no regulations on how whales are killed. As many as 70% do not die after being shot with the initial harpoon, so a second harpoon or rifle shot is necessary. Additionally, some whales can take an hour and a half to die, leaving them to suffer in that time. The IWC (International Whaling Commission) has no regulations, only recommendations on killing methods of whales.

In addition for the consequences, there are many other arguments against for commercial whaling, including its justification as scientific research. The so called scientific research done by certain countries like Japan has some doubts due to various reasons and organisations like Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) are protesting or being an activist about this.

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11y ago

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