(some extracts from his article "The Whaling Controversy", 1982)

C.W. Nicol

Roots of Anti-Whaling

Two years later I returned to work once again for the Canadian government. It was during this time, while working for the Environmental Protection Service, that I became aware of an anti-whaling movement instigated by a New Zealand-born psychologist. He worked out of Vancouver studying killer whales, and had a few idyllic experiences playing the flute in a kayak. The killer whales sometimes came and surrounded the kayak, and seemed to enjoy the music.

This convinced him that it was wrong to call such creatures "killer whales" because they were so gentle. He preferred to call them "orca" from their original Latin name.

Having had experiences in the Arctic myself with curious pods of killer whales, I would not dispute that they appear generally harmless to men. However, they certainly do kill, as all hunting creatures do. I have seen, at close range, a killer whale smack a harp seal right up into the air with a blow from his tail, then take the seal in his jaws, in a flurry of spray and blood, when the seal came down. I have also recorded many a scarred fin whale flipper that has been tom by killer whales.

The psychologist put together what he called a "Whale Show," arguing in it that because killer whales were intelligent and gentle, and because the blue whale had been hunted to a dangerously low level of population, the Japanese should stop whaling immediately. I went to one of his shows. In it I heard him say that "the Japanese don't need meat anyway, they can eat rice."

It was pleasing to see so many people taking an interest in conservation at last, but the poorly-assembled arguments this man put forward were not likely to impress Japan. When I heard that he was taking his whale show to Japan (really a killer whale show, as all his whale experiences were with them rather than with the big whales), I thought, for his sake, and for the sake of a sensible approach to conservation, that I had better talk to him.

As a result, I came into contact with an organisation called Greenpeace, already quite famous for some very courageous protests against nuclear testing.

Japanese Whaling Misunderstood

I went to talk to these people - who were to relay my message to the psychologist, now a celebrity - and over coffee and wine and a very pleasant evening with eight very serious and intelligent folk, I discussed the whole question of whales and whaling. I said that the killer whale was an inappropriate symbol through which to present an anti-whaling stand to the Japanese. The killer whale has never been seriously hunted by the Japanese, and its meat is not much liked, even in places like Taiji.

Aside from that, the claim that the Japanese were exterminating the last of the blue whales was simply untrue. The blues had been protected for over a decade. I talked all evening, not so much to defend whaling, but to try to give these very intense and serious people a better picture of whaling, whales, and of Japan's long use of whale meat for human protein.

At the time I first spoke with the Greenpeace folk, I wanted to act as a kind of Devil's Advocate, providing both the whalers' point of view and Japan's historical need, so that the whaling protest would be a sound one. There were many things to worry about. The Russian fleet still took undersized whales off the west coast. They never have observed international agreements in fisheries. The Alaskan Eskimos were wounding more Arctic Right Whales or Bowheads than they landed. There were pirate ships operating.

However, in all my talks and slide shows on whales and whaling, on whaling ships and whaling equipment, I kept defending the Japanese as being the best whalers of all, and ultimately the most approachable because Japan needed a reliable and long-term source of protein from the sea. However, there were people who saw other opportunities in the protest. This fact came to the surface when ex-Prime Minister Tanaka came to Canada. When he stopped off in Vancouver, he was greeted by a hoard of yelling, fist- and placard-waving people shouting nasty things, not only about whaling, but about Japanese in general. There was a cry to boycott Japanese goods. The anti-whaling protest had changed into a virulent campaign, based almost entirely on lies, half-truths and histrionics. One Greenpeacer, a locally famous journalist, coined the term "media manipulation." That's what they proceeded to do to: manipulate the media.

People in Canada, and then in the USA, were led to believe that the Japanese were exterminating the last of the blue whales to feed pets and make cosmetics. The fact that the great whales were almost entirely protected was ignored. The fact that the Japanese use whale meat and whale blubber almost entirely as high-quality human food was not known. (In Japan, all whale meat goes for human food, including sperm whale meat. Oil rendered from sperm whale blubber is used industrially, while the crunchy remainder is used in "oden." Blubber from baleen whales is almost entirely processed without rendering, for human food.)

Meanwhile, in Japan, people either were ignorant of what was going on, or, if they knew, were hurt and puzzled. What was the fuss about? Didn't Westerners kill cows? Didn't Westerners hunt deer and foxes?

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