South Korea is considering hunting whales in the waters off its shores for what it says are scientific purposes, drawing criticism from environmental groups and countries around the Pacific Rim.
Citing calls from fishermen for a resumption of limited whaling, the head of the South Korean delegation to the International Whaling Commission, Kang Joon-suk, said Wednesday that Seoul was working on a proposal to hunt minke whales migrating off the Korean Peninsula.
As everyone knows, some of the world’s greatest scientists are first-and-foremost fishermen: J. Craig Venter, James Cameron, the Gorton’s guy.
The tastiest / most scientifically pertinent part. (Photo by kohane.)
The “we’re doing it for science” argument is one that Japan has used for years. As of yet, there have been very few peer-reviewed studies about the whales that they catch.
One scientific topic that South Korea hopes to study: deliciousness.
In his statement to the whaling commission, South Korea’s Kang said that his country’s “whaling history dates back to prehistoric times, and whale meat is still part of a culinary tradition of some of Korea’s local areas such as Ulsan.”
You know. Science.
Earlier this week, the Times produced this luxuriant video about efforts to protect blue whales along a heavily trafficked shipping route.
[protected-iframe id=”c2bbbd1ffc37751e7bf8301216bdb313-5104299-36375464″ info=”http://graphics8.nytimes.com/bcvideo/1.0/iframe/embed.html?videoId=100000001641208&playerType=embed” width=”480″ height=”365″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”]
The obvious answer is to kill all of the blue whales and then study them with science to figure out how to save them. We can raise money for this important research by selling the whale meat.
True fact: The only reason scientists studied the Higgs boson was because they heard it made a great artificial sweetener.
