Don't get me wrong, I'm all for shooting whales. Get a bunch of tourists, put them on boat, send it out to the North Pacific and let them fire off some rounds for an hour or two. Of course the ammunition used would be Kodak and Fuji stock, but it's a lot more humane than blowing them up. And it doesn't make the water go all red.
With the exception of some Japanese and Scandinavian fisherman, a few Japanese scientists and the Japanese government, in the minds of most people -- whale hunting ranks up there with clubbing baby seals as, well, kind of nasty.
But forget the graphic images, emotion and PC rhetoric of the anti-whale lobby There is another reason why we shouldn't be hunting Willy. Simple economics.