Troubled Waters: The Cruelty of Whaling

"Troubled Waters" deserves your attention. This enthusiastically endorsed report marks a reinvigorated international campaign against whaling. Sir David Attenborough wrote the foreword, summarizing the truth that "hard scientific dispassionate evidence shows that there is no humane way to kill a whale at sea." He adds: "Dr Harry Lillie, who worked as a ship's physician on a whaling trip in the Antarctic half a century ago, wrote this: `If we can imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears stuck in its stomach and being made to pull a butcher's truck through the streets of London while it pours blood into the gutter, we shall have an idea of the method of killing. The gunners themselves admit that if whales could scream, the industry would stop for nobody would be able to stand it.' The use of harpoons with explosive grenade heads is still the main technique used by whalers today." Sir David asks that any reader of the report should "decide for yourself whether the hunting of whales in this way should still be tolerated by a civilised society."

The report documents the absolute cruelty of modern whaling, the certain suffering for at least 1400 large whales that will be killed by Norway, Japan and Iceland in 2004. It shows how meaningless the questionable statistics of populations have been to the core issue; that whaling is unacceptably inhumane and cruel. To find out more about the campaign, see http://www.whalewatch.org/.