In fact, the Japanese have argued that whales (some of them are now 1% of their pre19th century population) are competitors for fish, and thus need to be regulated, an argument many fishermen will support, whether the science is there or not.
Exactly Drew. Coincidentally, that's the same argument fishermen in Florida are using to try to re-open the Goliath Grouper fisheries, they say the groupers are competing with them for the fishes. I think we talked about this before in some other topic, but to me, it's like killing Cheetahs because they are competing with humans for Gazelles, senseless.
After the original news broke regarding Typhoon Restaurant being busted for selling whale meat, I had gone over to Typhoon to voice my opinion/complaint/outrage to the management. The manager apologized to me (I actually told him that he really needed to do more than apologize to me) and said that he "had already received 10,000 phone calls about this". Of course I assume he was exaggerating, but obviously people were not happy about this...evidently the pressure got to them, thus the closing of their sister restaurant, Hump. They most definitely got what was deserved! Hopefully they will do more to rectify their error...
I wonder if they closed the Hump because business wasn't great anyhow and with the negative publicity and fines, it wasn't worth it to keep it open. I mean successful restaurants would be able to weather public scrutiny. Look at Nobu, which was fingered in a movie no less! Still they remained defiant and refused to remove Hon Maguro from the menu. I guess having Bobby De Niro as a shareholder, they're just tougher fellas!
Still a pity that people lost jobs over a management screw up. Serving illegal food in a big restaurant like that is just plain stupid !
