Flying up the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City to Labrador and Newfoundland I saw about 100 whales in the water. This at the same time that the newspapers were covering a debate about whether to allow renewed commercial whaling. It is so easy to find whales from a plane, especially when the water is flat like the upstream portion of the river where the whales swim to find the richest food. You just look for streaks of bubbles like a dotted line and the whale will be at the front. What chance do these animals have against modern technology? None, obviously. Yet must we ban whaling? Perhaps a compromise would be to allow whaling but only with the technology described in the book Moby Dick. The whales had more of a chance back then and not infrequently managed to kill their hunters.
But maybe as the world population becomes ever more obese people will feel a greater kinship to these multi-ton creatures. Once we’re all incredibly fat and easy to spot from an airplane we will have enough sympathy for whales to leave them alone.
[If you are looking for a summer trip and wish to see a lot of whales without getting seasick, you can see Belugas, Humpbacks, Blues(!), et al., at the confluence of the Saguenay and St. Lawrence rivers (tourism site). Sadly there is no airport right near the town of Tadoussac (Charlevoix is closest) but it is only about a 2.5-hour drive from Quebec City, right along the lake shore with a beautiful cathedral and then a big casino on the way.]
Kill ‘Em And Grill ‘Em (but not too many).
once that you allow trade in products from these animals it will be impossible to detect poaching.
It is one thing to limit herd size of animals like deer that are prone to overpopulation in the absence of predation and quite another to ‘manage’ a herd of animals that are still on the verge of extinction.
Waiting to see your photos. Hope you will post them soon. I dont think you have updated your website this year.
Gary is right. Whaling should be banned. I have an Inuit friend who told me that the natives in Alaska are still allowed to kill whales. That’s just wrong.
The name of the province to which you were flying is “Newfoundland and Labrador”, rather than “Labrador and Newfoundland.”
As the last comment should indicate to you – Newfoundlanders are even bigger PITAs (oops – I mean more of a “distinct society”) than Quebecers, even though they speak something resembling English.
Shane: Sadly the airplane is not capable of teleportation. So coming from Quebec City to St. Anthony (where the Vikings landed) it is in fact Labrador and then Newfoundland…
Jeez kilaen…
Thanks for pointing out the exception to the rule that I tried to define…
Inuit are allowed to take whales, here is a synopsis of a recent study:
http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe/volume_6/freemanvol6.htm
So, its not a black and white world, whaling, no whaling…
But it is still a far cry between an isolated native culture whaling and a global mechanized civilization whaling. Even allowing whalineg using 19th century methods would put waaay to much pressure on the poplations that exist.
IMHO it is better to use out planes and satellites to study their behavior in hopes of sustaining their existance than hunting them
Why not tag all the whales in an area with GPS units that also detect the whale’s heartbeat? The unit could fire up an EPIRB in the event the whale dies, which would allow game wardens to determine whether poaching is going on. Permits to bag one whale could then pay for the tagging.
minor nitpick:
it’s not the World population that’s obese, it the American population.
Nice link… I have posted it on my site.
For whale viewing , how does Peninsula Valdez in Argentina rank?