Save the Whale - Again!

This week more than seventy nations have gathered in Anchorage, Alaska for the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to determine the fate of whales.
The meeting is expected to end with the continuation of a 21-year moratorium on commercial whaling, but Japan and other pro-whaling nations are hoping to overturn this ban much to the horror of environmentalists and anti-whaling nations such as the U.S., Britain, New Zealand and Australia.

Norway and Iceland ignored the moratorium, enacted in 1986 to protect several vulnerable species, and still hunt whales for commercial reasons, whereas Japan kills more than 1,000 whales a year, they say, in the name of science - although whale meat is openly sold as a delicacy in shops and restaurants all over the country.

After millions of years inhabiting the planet, this Leviathan of the sea, with no natural predator except for man, has already suffered greatly - about 95 per cent of the species has been killed off in just the past few centuries.
In addition, according to Greenpeace, tens of thousands more drown each year after getting caught in fishing nets and countless others may suffer from the effects of pollution, ship strikes and the impacts of sonar or climate change.

One can safely presume that the majority of the world's population would like to give this species of cetacean (a warm-blooded, air-breathing marine mammal) a break in the 21st century and beyond.