Whether or not you believe that, there's also the objection about conservation: whales are definitely dwindling and those fishing them are making no efforts to

Whether or not you believe that, there's also the objection about conservation: whales are definitely dwindling and those fishing them are making no efforts to renew them, and people don't like eating them anyway, so why not focus that attention on animals we've domesticated? It doesn't have to be about suffering or intelligence specifically to still be objectionable to hunt whales.