This is a National Geographic video about blue whales.
Ban all whale hunting, says Tutu
“What makes it even worse is the brutality (of whale hunting),” said Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, at the launch.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which backs the campaign, says whales are usually hunted with grenade-tipped harpoons that explode inside the animal.
The world imposed a moratorium on all whale hunts in 1986 after many species were driven towards extinction by decades of exploitation for meat, oil and whalebone.
The campaign has other high profile supporters including British actor Pierce Brosnan.
From New Scientist:
Chief medical officers of the Faroe Islands have recommended that pilot whales no longer be considered fit for human consumption, because they are toxic – as revealed by research on the Faroes themselves.
The remote Atlantic islands, situated between Scotland and Iceland, have been one of the last strongholds of traditional whaling, with thousands of small pilot whales killed every year, and eaten by most Faroese.
Anti-whaling groups have long protested, but the Faroese argued that whaling is part of their culture – an argument adopted by large-scale whalers in Japan and Norway.
But today in a statement to the islanders, chief medical officers Pál Weihe and Høgni Debes Joensen announced that pilot whale meat and blubber contains too much mercury, PCBs and DDT derivatives to be safe for human consumption.