Subtitle: "More jobs are created by watching the creatures than by hunting them."
Watch this:
"The University of Iceland study said that taking and processing 300 whales annually could sustain—wait for it—80 to 90 jobs."
"Whales can provide jobs, however—for the whale-watching industry. Just as East Africa profitably evolved from a Big Game hunting ground to a prime destination for photo safaris, a just-released working paper from the University of British Columbia reports that whale-watching has become a $2.1 billion business that employs 13,000 workers in 68 nations to entertain 13 million annual viewers. That tally could increase by $830 million, creating jobs in scores of additional maritime countries for a further 11,000 workers—many of them idled professionals whose local fish stocks have been scooped up by trawlers."
Furthermore:
"A National Public Radio story broadcast Monday noted that “the desperate, immediate postwar period is the only time in Japanese history when whale meat was consumed nationwide.”"
Case closed?
Full article here (The Big Money)
I would actually like to comment on my own entry - people DO eat whales, but the argument is that there is no commercial need.
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