Hunting Dolphins

This is an interesting story about a village in Japan that hunts dolphins. Even in Japan, that's generally not done, but the government doesn't really do anything about it.

While we might (rightfully) think of hunting dolphins as a bad thing, the Japanese dolphin hunters have a fairly compelling argument:

To some puzzled people in rural Japan, the question comes down to this: What's the difference between killing and eating a dolphin, and killing and eating a fish? Or a chicken? Or a cow?

Many Japanese consider the deer a sacred messenger from the gods, he says, but they would never suggest that people in other parts of the world stop venturing into the woods on a quest for venison.

On the surface, this is a good point. But there is a fundamental difference. Cows and chickens are domesticated animals. They are farmed. There is a fairly infinite supply of them, assuming some mass pandemic doesn't wipe them out. Dolphins are wild, threatened species. The equivalent of hunting dolphin is not a chicken, it's an elephant.

Of course, the same goes for people who eat most fish. That tuna you are eating isn't coming from a farm. Tuna are heavily overfished and their population is collapsing. If you are eating tilapia or another farmed fish that's one thing. But eating a wild fish is the same as eating a wild hippo or tiger. This is why I believe fish are the least ethical category of modern meat. Everything is farmed, often in a bad way it is true, but nonetheless, at least we are destroying a species by eating them.

I should note that deer is kind of a special case. So few people hunt them that their populations are rising rather than falling. Unless we bring back wolves, hunting this wild animal is OK. If everyone started doing it though, that would be something quite different.