“The harpoon seemed to pass right through it, which can happen and the second explosion took longer. The whole event this time seemed in slow motion. The whale dived, and a great green cloud burst up to the surface. Blood turns green underwater at 50 feet...or was this some of its intestines? It came up on the starboard side, its huge head, a third of its total body size, shaking itself, and then it gave out a most terrible cry, half in protest, half in pain, and then it dived again. They loaded the next harpoon, the killer, but could not get a shot at it as it twisted and turned, hurting itself all the more. Finally, the lookout in the crow's nest shouted down that it was coming up dying. Its mouth was opening.”
There is no way to kill whales instantly. The harpoons used by whalers to kill thousands of whales cause a slow death, sometimes taking an hour to kill the whale.
The trauma and rage experienced by stricken whales was documented by Greenpeace activists who sailed to the North Pacific in 1975 in order to place themselves between Russian whalers and their prey. They observed a small whale, about 30 feet below, floating dead on the water. The Greenpeace crew positioned their rubber raft between the whalers and the whales, thinking that the harpooner would not fire the heavy harpoon with the possibility of killing the Greenpeace crew, but they were wrong. The harpooner fired over them, making a direct hit on a large whale; the whale died slowly and painfully in its own blood. Then another whale in the pod charged at the Greenpeace crew. Soon the whale realized they were not the harpooners; it headed instead for the whaler. The whale charged at the harpoon boat and seemed to leap out of the water in an attempt to get to the gunner. When the whale was almost directly below the whaling boat, the gunner pointed his cannon down and killed the whale.
Another cruel aspect of whaling is the killing of female whales, leaving their calves to starve. Some whalers even killed the calf first, with the knowledge that the mother would not leave it.
How would you feel if you were brutally killed for no reason? Would you like being shot by a harpoon? In conclusion, I think that whales should no longer be hunted. Ban this cruel trade!
Reference:
http://www.endangeredspecieshandbook.org/trade_cruelty.php
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