"The killing of whales has no place in the 21st Century.  It is a cruel, barbaric, and antiquated slaughter of highly intelligent, socially complex marine mammals and is equivalent in every respect to the mass murder of human beings.  We will never accept any form of whaling - commercial, scientific, or aboriginal."

This is the response from Captain Paul Watson, the president of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, to the report that the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is considering lifting the 19-year ban on commercial whaling.

A report prepared for the IWC by Mark Zacharias of the University of Victoria, Leah Gerber of Arizona State University, and David Hyrenbach of North Carolina's Duke University has recommended that the moratorium be ended and commercial whaling be resurrected.

"We fully expect to take a lot of heat for this...People are going to say, `You're suggesting that we resume global whaling?'  Yes, we are suggesting that, but it's better than the alternative, which is pretending it doesn't happen,'' said Zacharias, a marine biologist.

Captain Watson responded by saying, "It appears to me that a better alternative would be to ban this so-called scientific whaling by Japan and act aggressively against blatant illegal whaling by Norway.  Both these nations are pirate whaling nations.  Instead of forcing them into compliance with international regulations, the IWC is contemplating giving them a green light to kill even more whales."

According to the report, whale populations have rebounded.  This statement has no credible science to back it up.  The studies utilized to back these statements were conducted by paid biostitutes in the employ of the governments or whaling companies of Japan and Norway.

Sea Shepherd holds the opinion that the whales have suffered enough at the hands of humanity.  It is time to place all the harpoons in museums.  Our oceans are dying.  Commercial fisheries are collapsing because of the incompetence and mis-management by government fishery agencies and the same scientists who now claim that whales can be managed sustainably are the same scientists who oversaw the demise of the fisheries and justified the extreme takes and the over-exploitation of species.

"If the IWC resumes whaling," said Captain Watson, "it will be a declaration of war on the whales by humanity.  The blood of the whales will spurt once again into the cold sea and men with even colder, dark, arrogant hearts will once again inflict legal torture and death to the whales.  Whaling is an insane obscenity and represents all that is callous and cruel with the human species.  No sensitive ecologically aware person can accept such a bloody industry - it is an occupation for sadists and butchers."