Originally Posted by
Marduk
apart from being a founder member of Greenpeace you mean
only two countries still use factory whaling ships, powered harpoons and a legal loophole, neither of them is Inuit, what the Japanese do is actually not for research purposes, they haven't produced any cetology research papers, despite claiming thats what they are doing, whale products always end up on the open market, consider
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7099720.stm
ETA:
Inuit Whale Hunting regulations:
http://www.uark.edu/misc/jcdixon/His...plan_final.pdf
the reason
if that were the case, why 50, not 1 ?
why 1000 Minke whales ?
why not 2 ?
dead whales wash up on beaches all the time, every other country in the world carries out research on those carcasses, the only reason the Japanese require fresh ones is because:-
despite what you may think of Paul Watson, the Japanese are not carrying out research, they are using the pretext of research to carry on whaling, something which every other country on earth (with one other exception)doesn't do because
1. its unnecessary
2. its inhumane
the Japanese only excuse
is pretty weak
From what I understand, the hunting protocol for the Inuit is to go out in traditional seal skin boats and traditional harpoons and
tag a Bowhead whale, once the harpoon so much as touches the whale, it is finished off with a motor boat with a powered explosive tipped harpoon. They use a combination of traditional and modern hunting practices.
They, like the Japanese, claim cultural heritage and their catch ends up on the commercial market as Alaskabushpilot mentioned. Its on a much smaller scale than what the Japanese do but I don't see such a major distinction between the two practices.