Japan resumes commercial whaling after 30 years

Japan is not the only nation to hunt whales. Norway has a commercial operation in its own waters, for example. But what infuriates conservationists is that Japan is hunting and killing whales in a conservation zone, the Southern Ocean whaling sanctuary, that surrounds Antarctica. Japan claims that it does so only for scientific purposes.

Then, a few years ago, the International Court of Justice – at the instigation of Australia and New Zealand – ruled that the country’s whaling plan had no scientific basis. Japan was forced to halt whale hunting and had to come back with a plan to carry out “scientific whaling” in the region. This now involves catching only 330 minkes, and no humpbacks or fin whales. It was an important victory for conservationists.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/23/sea-shep...

This should be the bargain. If you are going to hunt whales, the whales should have a chance to hunt you back. Require the use of oar powered wooden whaleboats, hand thrown harpoons, manila ropes. There is no sportsmanship in the way the japanese do it now.

At the moment, there's very little we can tell about the exact make up of their intelligence.

Imagine, with your current intelligence, growing up in a world where you can move in three dimensions which has poor visibility but carries sounds very well. There are no fixed spots, so there is no "here". You also have no opposable thumbs, so you will never create tools or written records.

Now imagine that evolving over eons and generation upon generation: you might end up with a world view, a culture, and thought process that is complete alien.

What we observe as whale-songs might simply be them re-telling their Edda in an Ent-like fashion. We might be inadvertently hunting members of a species that is intellectually equal to ours, but too alien to understand.