Comments on: Japanese attitudes to whaling http://whatjapanthinks.com/2007/01/11/japanese-attitudes-to-whaling/ From kimono to keitai; research Japanese facts and figures through translated opinion polls and surveys. Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:29:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.2 By: kujirakira http://whatjapanthinks.com/2007/01/11/japanese-attitudes-to-whaling/comment-page-1/#comment-244244 Wed, 09 Mar 2011 06:04:09 +0000 http://whatjapanthinks.com/?p=533#comment-244244 Some issues I take with this, the Yahoo poll does indeed reference Iceland.
However, it specifically asks if people are in favor of returning to commercial whaling in light of Iceland’s intentions to do so themselves.
You seem to mischaracterize the question when it is actually asking what ICR said it was.

The original press releases from ICR, just for the record.
http://www.icrwhale.org/eng/070110Release.pdf
http://www.icrwhale.org/eng/070125Release.pdf

For all the talk of bias about the Yahoo poll it’s rather odd and incongruous that you would take Wikipedia t face value and defend a poll done by Greenpeace?
Obviously any poll over Yahoo is going to be flawed to some degree, but it seems like there is some other bias going on here when you hold a blatantly biased poll done by a biased party above one that is demonstrably even-handed though flawed.

Regarding mercury, that is only an issue with dolphin meat. Mercury contamination is also an issue with other predators that feed high on the food chain — including tuna, shark, etc. Mercury accumulates as organisms feed on eachother, gaining higher concentrations as they progress up the food chain.
Whales, on the other hand, feed on krill — minuscule creatures that are themselves very low on the food chain.
All the studies on Hg in cetacean meat further back this up. Toothed cetaceans (ie: dolphins) that consume other predators are high in mercury. Baleen whales are very low in mercury.

Animal Rights groups deliberately act as if there is no difference between whales and dolphins in order to muddy the waters and vilify all hunting of cetaceans.
The reality is that, if they were truly concerned about health aspects, they would have to concede that hunting more whales is logical.

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