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You say: > Japanese whaling fleets are targeting those exact whale populations that are endangered. But the wikipedia article you linked basically says the ex

• zzzeek 4y ago
  first off there are many examples in that article of currently endangered whale species still being killed by Japanese whalers. I did not say anything about "Minke" whales specifically. Per the article, killing of endangered species continues: > Japan kept official hunts of endangered species such as North Pacific right whales until 1994,[141] but intentional by-catches of endangered still continue to present in unknown scales. Secondly, the actual point is that Japanese whalers claim existing whale populations are bad for the environment because such populations are too large, which is ridiculous, given the endangered, recently endangered, or nearly endangered status of most of the whale species they have targeted, not to mention apex predators are not prone to overpopulation since they rely on lower levels of the food chain to survive. It does not matter which species are currently endangered and which are not. It is not my burden to disprove a made up fact. > So Japan is planning to kill about 300 Minke whales a year out of a population of 500,000 or so (using the lowest estimates from the wikipedia page). That’s about 0.06% of the population per year, which definitely does not seem like enough threaten the survival of the species. nor would it therefore have any impact on reducing overconsumption of other fish species, which is their actual claim, if in fact their population reduction across all whale species is extremely low. > In my opinion the inaccuracies in your comments thus far go far beyond mere "language" issues. I don't think any amount of careful rewording would fix them. These are factual and logical misunderstandings that are core to the very point you are trying to make. you are clearly very skilled at language which makes it all the more clear that your continued intentional misunderstanding of a point I was making is not constructive.
  • freetime2 4y ago
    Previously you said: > Japanese whaling fleets are targeting those exact whale populations that are endangered And the evidence you have cited was this line from a wikipedia article: > Japan kept official hunts of endangered species such as North Pacific right whales until 1994,[141] but intentional by-catches of endangered still continue to present in unknown scales. There are a number of different issues here: > Japan kept official hunts of endangered species such as North Pacific right whales until 1994 ,[141] This ended nearly 30 years ago, so I will ignore as it is not relevant to the discussion of what Japan is currently doing. (That citation from the wikipedia article is also completely bogus - if you visit the link you will find an article written in 1818 (!) that has been translated to Chinese. So definitely not about modern Japanese whaling.) > intentional by-catches of endangered still continue to present in unknown scales Issues here are: * No citation given in the wikipedia article * Saying it happens in “unknown scales” provides no indication of the size of the problem. Is is 1 per year or 1000? * “intentional” appears to be a typo here. “By-catch” by definition means the unintentional capture of non-targeted species. So to recap - you made a claim earlier that Japanese are targeting endangered species. And then as justification you referenced an improperly cited claim about something that ended 30 years ago, and an un-cited claim about by-catches - which is very much not the same thing as targeting endangered species. There is absolutely nothing here to justify your claim. By the way, I do think that by-catch is a real issue that is estimated to kill 300,000 cetaceans every year [1]. So many orders of magnitude more impactful than Japanese whaling. But it is a global issue inherent to commercial fishing rather than an issue with Japanese fishing in particular. > It is not my burden to disprove a made up fact. I’ll remind you that this whole thread started precisely because you did attempt to disprove this claim. If your position is simply that “This seems like an unlikely claim, but I have no evidence to disprove it” - then that’s perfectly reasonable. But based on the arguments and evidence you have put forth so far, any degree of confidence in your opinion beyond that is completely unjustified. And finally, I would just like to point out one more inaccuracy in your most recent comment for good measure: > not to mention apex predators are not prone to overpopulation since they rely on lower levels of the food chain to survive Baleen whales (which are the types that are targeted by Japanese whalers) are not considered apex predators since they feed primarily on krill and smaller fish. So basically they are competing with fish for the same food source. [1] https://iwc.int/bycatch https://iwc.int/bycatch