KUROHIME, Nagano Pref. — When I turned on my TV to both BBC World and CNN this morning, I was shocked and saddened by the sight of a minke whale and calf being winched up the ramp of a Japanese factory ship in the Antarctic Ocean.
The sight of a dead whale doesn't shock me because I've seen thousands. However, to see obvious and irrefutable evidence that Japanese whalers had crossed the line to killing calves, and probably a mother and calf, was too much.
I first sailed aboard a whaler in 1965 from Coal Harbor in a deep fjord in northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. I was an observer with the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Arctic Biological Station, and I had come to learn how to take data and samples from large whales.