Southern Resident Killer Whale

One major reason why orcas should not be held in captivity is because orcas are a family oriented type species. Orcas are extremely social animals. Orcas are very close to their family. For example, when SeaWorld orca catchers came to capture orcas in the year 1977, John Crowe, one of the orca catcher’s, said, “When we took the baby orcas and left the adults, the adults huddled in a circle and made noises to the baby orcas that were being taken away.” He also stated, “We dropped the net to let the other adult orcas go, but they stayed and huddled around the boat.” When killer whales are in captivity, they are not with their family. They are involuntary forced to live with other orcas from a different family and are

Get out of line and take a stand to stop the unjustified capture of killer whales. Orcas, also known as killer whales, have been imprisoned, against their will, for years. Evidence proves many Orcas are inhumanly captured, from the ocean, for the sheer pleasure of human entertainment and profit. Irrefutably, these majestic, intelligent, marine creatures belong in one place, and one place only, the ocean. Clearly, documentation proves, these magnificent mammals do not thrive in captivity, become irritated, and have injured or killed hundreds of humans.

People say that keeping orca’s in captivities is not a problem, yet they do not realize that, orcas are also human beings. There are several reasons, why keeping these thirty-feet long creatures, in captivities is a problem. One of them, which are the tank, which is too small, compared to ocean where they can swim freely. One the other side, in captivities, the space is limited. Comparatively, to how they swim out in the wild “orcas can swim up to 100 miles per day- a phenomenal amount, in comparison to the exercise they receive in captivity”(Cronin). While being in captivity, orca has to keep swimming in circles or floats. Out “In the wild, killer whales typically travel in pods of between five and 30”(Melissa). In captivities there are only few whales, so it makes them more aggressive toward one another. This sometimes can be lead to danger by killing each other for fighting to gain power of the tank.

Killer Whales, otherwise known as Orcas, are not designed to be held in captivity. Over the past few years, we have seen an increase in Orca captivity, which also allows us to see a decrease in the quality of life in these animals. Within captivity, Orcas will experience a decline in mental health, limitations to it’s natural instincts as a wild animal, and in extreme cases, their behaviour will lead them to inflict harm or even kill their human companions.

"Killer Whales: Gentle Giants, or Viscous Killers?" Killer whales are an important subject of mythology for many indigenous peoples, especially the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. The whales have not been hunted extensively by humans, although they have been hunted by some shore whaling operations, and some individuals have been taken as aquarium show animals from the waters around the Pacific Northwest and Iceland. Killer whales are perceived by many near-shore fishermen to be in competition with human fishing activity (Anheiser Busch 1). The killer whale, or Orcinus orca can be found worldwide in all seas from both tropics to Arctic and Antarctic oceans. They are one of the most well known whales because of the captivity of Shamu

Each day studying, whales were present between 50% and 88% of the time meaning that a large fraction of the populations were routinely occupying (Williams 714). The amount of time killer whales spend on the reserve has been drastically underestimated. The effects that the pipeline would have on the whales as well as their prey would be devastating. This is a very high- risk marine habitat that is very susceptible to damage under high- impact events (like oil spills). Williams goes onto explain, “Conservation benefits to killer whales would presumably be improved …by declaring it {this area} to be a no- take, no- entry marine protected area, and by keeping the region free from oil tankers. With killer whale populations decreasing all over the world the Canadian government faced a big problem with wanting to place a pipeline in a place that could potentially deplete the species population at an even more alarming rate: even the destruction of one group of killer whales could take down the whole system. This study put into perspective what large threats oil spills, and tanker traffic would have on the recovery of this

Despite claiming the slaughter is needed to learn more about whales, Japan has not offered any new worthwhile information about whales, with the exception that they eat large quantities of krill (Zelko, 2013, p. A. 13) . Japan has been using this excuse, among many others, since 1986. In the decades Japan has used this excuse, it seems almost ridiculous that Japan has not learned anything new about the mammals’ breeding, migratory, or any other habits. When Australia took Japan to the International Court of Justice to challenge the validity of Japan’s scientific whaling industry, Australia’s agent to the court, Bill Campbell, stated, “Japan seeks to cloak its ongoing commercial whaling in the lab coat of science.” He later told journalists: “You don’t kill 935 whales a year to conduct scientific research. You don’t even need to kill one whale to conduct scientific research” (McCurry, 2013) .

Imagine that you are a whale swimming peacefully in the ocean, minding your own business. Then, all of a sudden, something sharp hits you, and digs into your skin. Then, another object hits you again. The pain is very painful, but not enough pain to kill you yet. You keep getting hit by these sharp objects, and your enormous whale body does not give up quite yet. When you get dragged up onto this big boat, you know that you will be cut up into pieces and there is nothing you can do about it now. This is what happens to hundreds of whales a year, and it is terrible. Therefore, there is no reason for this nonsense of killing whales. Whale hunting must be stopped because consuming whale meat is unhealthy, whales are becoming endangered, and there is no need to kill whales for scientific reasons.

Whales have been swimming in the Earth’s oceans for 20 million years; their haunting songs can travel underwater for thousands of miles, they are the largest animals to exist on Earth yet they survive on some of the smallest organisms. A whale’s heart can weigh up to 1,300 pounds, and a baby whale can drink up to 130 gallons of its mother’s milk each day (Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, 2010). Currently whale hunters claim that they are killing whales for scientific purposes; however, whale meat is being sold at a high price, considered a delicacy, and found on more than 5000 Japanese school menus (Jamsey, 2010). The International Whaling Commission (IWC) with the support of the current United States President Barrack Obama wants

According to researchers there have been over 15.000 whales killed in Japan and Norway since the 1900’s. Not to mention the amount of minke whales killed for research by the Japanese whaling fleets. In this assignment I will give my opinion on Japan’s continued killing of whales despite the ban on commercial whaling.

Commercial whaling, this happened between the 17th and the 20th century. This endangered many species of whales like the Humpback, Blue, Southern Right and sperm whales. But particularly the Southern Right whale. Commercial whaling has been stopped as of December 1978 after to many species had been on edge of being cleared out. It is banned by the IWC right now but, there may be a push to get rid of the ban as the populations are rising up again. The Southern Right Whale was the perfect target because of its slow swimming and floatation when dead. The Southern Right Whale has been protected since 1935.

Brian Handwerk4 discusses the Southern Sanctuary which was established as a “compromise effort during this week's meeting.” The Southern Sanctuary was developed in 1994 and presumed, “that 19 million square miles (50 million square kilometers) of waters surrounding Antarctica—as a critical space safe from commercial whaling. Most of the world's whales feed in these waters.”4 People should care about whales because they are being hunted, which is illegal. The whales’ population is damage due to hunting. The people who eat sushi with whale meat in it. The people are a part of the problem because they are demanding an animal that is near extinction. The ecosystem is affected because whales are a part of it. Whales are a part of the ocean. In the ocean is revolving cycle, such as planktons being eating by fish, which are eaten by whales. In order for the ocean to function, a cycle has to happen, Jeremy Jackson5. A solution could be finding another meat to use to substitute whale meat, or having a numerous amount of customer that stop demanding sushi. By lower demand the Japanese will have no reason to kill the Minke whale because it is not a request.

Hunting and killing whales has become a topic of great controversy in the 21st century. Anti-whalers claim that hunting whales is an inhumane practice and there is absolutely no reason to partake in this sport. Not only is it next to impossible to kill these animal humanely, adult whales are intergraded into family pods and killing one may impact other members of the family (Hoyt and Hvenegaard 2002). They also argue that whales are a keystone species to marine ecosystems and therefore should not be hunted at all. If these whales were to disappear from the seas, there would be devastation in all tropic levels (Hoyt and Hvenegaard 2002; Schneider and Pearce 2004; Springer et al 2003). However, these anti-whalers fail to see both the economic

Whales are one of the many unique species and play a vital role in the marine ecosystem, but sadly these species are suffering and are about to be driven to extinction, all because of whaling. This is something that should be prevented at all cost because the extinction of whales will disrupt the ecosystem and it is a very cruel act towards peaceful organisms, such as whales.

As mentioned earlier, nations need to come to a compromise for the sake of the whales and the economies. A possible way to settle disputes of this sort would be to initiate a cultural court, similar to what we have with the International Criminal Court. The court would need to have cultural heritage experts serving on the panel as well as other qualified people. One of the things that should be avoided when creating it, would be people with agendas favoring their country. It is a difficult thing to address, but its creation would further give equal opportunity to protected