The family of the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin — wife Terri and daughter Bindi — are making 2008 their year for a campaign against Japanese whaling.
After Steve Irwin’s death in 2007, Terri Irwin purchased a whale watching business. That whale watching business will help launch the Irwin family’s anti-whaling project. Terri’s goal is to demonstrate that whale research can be done without killing — Japanese whalers continue to hunt and kill humpbacks in the name of science. Whale data gathered by Irwin’s whale watching business in the southern hemisphere will be analyzed at Oregon State University.
Japan has been getting some harsh criticism for their scientific whaling expeditions in the Pacific and Antarctic. A whale hunt in the name of scientific research is allowed as a loophole in the 1986 ban on whaling — and has allowed Japanese whalers to slaughter thousands of whales. Recent pressure from international whale advocates led to Japan abandoning a recent plan to kill fifty humpbacks for research purposes. Part of that pressure came from Australia and New Zealand — two places that have booming whale watching industries.
If the Irwins can successfully demonstrate that they can gather the same data about whales without killing, they hope Japan will cease whaling entirely. An end to whaling will benefit land and ocean alike; the whale watching industry can continue and we won’t end up with another species hunted to extinction.
Bindi Irwin plans to record an anti-whaling song called “Save Me” and release it in Asia. She hopes that the song will raise awareness of whale slaughter in the name of science and lead more people to work towards protecting whales of all kinds. In a statement made to an Australian news outfit, Bindi said that whaling was “cruel and awful”.
The Irwins hope that whaling soon becomes a practice from our past, not our present.