You can add me to the list of the pro whalers. I have enough whaling experience to justify my stand. I once worked on a mainland station and was factory manager and engineer on another station in New Zealand. I designed factories for a company in Fiji and another in Samoa. I was an advisor for another in the Cook Islands. In my days whaling was controlled with quotas that ensured the sustainability of the whale population. That was working with stable whale numbers. In the 50s Aristotle Onassis put together a fleet of 50 ships. Most were ex wartime "liberty" ships and corvettes. He took no notice of quotas and killed every whale he could find while at the same time arranging for the blame to passed on to Japanese and Russian fleets. His fleet was eventually caught and confiscated by the Peruvian Navy in Peruvian territorial waters but by then the damage had been done. The Australian east coast whaling was restricted to 750 whales with a population of approximately 3000 whales being counted as passing up this coast line annually. If you had a cattle herd of 3000 you could certainly send off 750 head each year to the abattoirs. That dropped to 300 in two years with no explanation other than they were being taken illegally before they reached these waters. Whalers agreed to a moratorium in order to let the numbers recover. We now have a count of 3000 humpbacks annually so the numbers are there for there to be a return to whaling operations. Whales are a resource of valuable red meat protein and edible oil with a nutritious stock feed as a bonus. There is practically no waste. The reason I was asked to help with south sea Island whaling was that they needed the protein food source as well as economic opportunity that whaling offered. Something that they still need.
The reason why whaling will not resume is controlled by two factors. The whale watch industry and the animal libbers.
