Whale Hunting At St. Vincent Island In the Caribbean, Dogfighting, And What Will The President Of the Humane Society Do Next?

     Passengers from a cruise ship that made St. Vincent island in the Caribbean a port of call went on a whale watching excursion. They observed a pod of 4 orcas (killer whales), at which time whalers from St. Vincent island proceeded to harpoon two of the orcas and kill them. Tourists on the whale watching excursion were in tears, according to news reports about the incident.

      The cruise ship company, according to one news report, said that St.Vincent would no longer be a port of call. Facing the harsh reality that the hunting of whales and dolphins does occur should not be a reason to stop making St.Vincent a port of call. Tourists can be a mixed blessing, and tourists visiting coral reefs can be the death of the reefs. But tourists can also be the reason some Caribbean islands and other locations in the world stop whaling and dolphin hunting. There is a lot of money that can be made in whale and dolphin watching, and having people invested in keeping whales and dolphins alive, instead of hunted, will help save those cetaceans. 

         Hopefully St. Vincent will remain a port of call, and whale watchers will help in the preservation of cetaceans by supporting whale watching tourism, and not by running away because some of the people hunt cetaceans. Whale watching tourism will disincentivize whale hunting. There are already successful examples of places were cetaceans and whale sharks have been hunted, and where hunting no longer takes place because it has been replaced by more lucrative tourism.

           The president and chief executive of one of the wealthiest charities in the world, the Humane Society, wrote that whaling is on the decline in St. Vincent, according to one news article. Unless it can be clearly ascertained as to how it is he reached this conclusion, it should not be taken at face value. Too often people blindly accept information that may be incorrect because of the prestige that they attach to the source of the information. Incorrect information can lead to a poor outcome.

             Whale hunting must not become what dog fighting became - namely an opportunity to receive a lot of free publicity without having to do much of anything except make it incredibly easy for dog fighters to continue fighting dogs with rarely any consequence.

                  The vast resources of the Humane Society, if put to good use, can help ensure that cetacean hunting ends in the Caribbean, and that coral reefs and marine reserves are adequately protected and patrolled. They can also help keep the huge amount of plastics that presently enters the oceans daily out of the waters. That will help save cetaceans and other marine life.

                   I hope that no animal organization does for whale hunting what I experienced they did for dog fighting-  which was exploit dog fighting and animal cruelty in order to promote and market themselves, while doing nothing substantive or in the way of true advocacy.