Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
The International Whaling Commmission is meeting in Portugal this week, which is appropriate as it looks like this year Europe may kill more whales than Japan.
In a related note, it looks like that in at least one small Japanese fishing town, the local Buddhist priest is keeping track of the whales killed by locals. Upon death, the whales are given a Buddhist name that is entered into an official death register, much like a human’s would be. The town has been recording the whales’ deaths for 320 years. There’s even a grave (complete with headstone and flowers) for the fetuses of whales found in their mother’s bodies. I’m not at all in favor of whaling, but I suppose if you’re going to do it, it’s nice to at least commemorate the animals’ deaths. Although one could argue, if you really respect the animal, you wouldn’t kill it in the first place.
