Can Tourism Save the Whales?

Whale watching is one of the most popular things to do in Cape Cod, where whaling used to be such a major part of the economy. Once whaling became an economically unprofitable endeavor people learned that there was still money to be made simply taking groups out to witness them in their natural environment.

Whale watching is more than a $100 million dollar industry in New England, and is a very important aspect of Cape Cod tourism. Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, berths many fleets during the tourist season, and most of them guarantee a whale sighting.

I had the opportunity to go whale watching a few years back. We left the dock at Cape Cod and sailed for a while before we got to the spot they assured us was a popular whale hang-out. Eventually one of our guides pointed out a grayish, blobby thing out on the distant horizon and assured us that that was, indeed, a humpback whale. Just when I started thinking: "Oo, ah. How neat. I could have seen gray blobby things back home," the guide said: "Oh, and also there seems to be three more about five feet from the port side of the boat." I had to throw some elbows to secure my spot at the railing, but it was well worth it to see these incredible animals so close by.

Whaling vs. Whale Watching

For long years whaling was a major aspect of the economy for places like Cape Cod and other parts of New England. Unfortunately, the whaling efforts here and all over the world decimated the whale population. At the time, the west was taking whales to harvest whale oil, but as we discovered cheaper, more efficient fuel sources our need to hunt the whales dried up – and towns like Cape Cod and Nantucket had to find new sources of income. Whale watching was a simple and obvious alternative for these places that were becoming natural tourist destinations.

But there were some countries that used the whales for more than just oil. In some places whales were a major food source. Most of them kept whaling right up until the international ban on all commercial whaling in the 80’s. Some countries, like Japan, are arguing to ease the restrictions so they can begin full scale whaling again. Which begs the question: Are whales worth more alive or dead?

Japanese Whaling

Like Cape Cod, Japan has developed a thriving whale watching industry. But unlike Cape Cod, Japan seems determined to keep up their whaling efforts at the same time. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has a provision in the moratorium that allows a country to take whales for scientific research, and Japan has taken advantage of this provision to bring in a large haul of whales each year.

Many activists consider Japan’s scientific whaling little more than a flimsy cover for small-scale commercial whaling. (This is possibly why you will very rarely see the endeavor mentioned without encapsulating it in derisive quotation marks, i.e. "scientific research", or "scientific whaling".) Japan, on the other hand, considers the ban on whaling a hypocritical attack on their cultural heritage by the west. Japan has been hunting whales since the 12^th century, and don’t seem likely to stop in the near future. Some areas of the country have even begun serving whale meat in schools where kids can develop a taste for it early on.

The days of slaughtering whales in Cape Cod may be long over, but all they did was take the oil and run. Whaling and eating whale meat has been a part of Japanese culture for centuries, and what gives us the right to change that?

How Long Can We Protect Them?

The good news? Worldwide conservation efforts are seeing success and some whale populations are on the verge of bouncing back. The bad news? If stable populations emerge, can we still forbid all commercial whaling? What grounds would we have? They’re cute and cuddly? It’s morally wrong? Surely some people in the east might have similar things to say about the west’s use of beef. Morality and subjective opinion are awfully hard to enforce in the international arena. So what does this mean? That we have to hope the whale populations recover… but not too much?

Enter the Tourist

Back to the original question: Is a whale worth more alive or dead? In the waters around Cape Cod the question is simple. We’re an economically minded people, and even though the exact amount of money a whale might generate is hard to calculate, the benefits of the whale watching industry are distributed throughout a community. Hotels, restaurants, and other industries all benefit from this aspect of Cape Cod tourism, and it would likely all dry up the instant someone harpooned a whale in Cape Cod waters. A dead whale, on the other hand, has value once, based on the going price of the meat.

Whale watching has become a world-wide billion dollar industry and communities from Cape Cod to Japan have thriving whale watching fleets. How long will Japan continue to subsidize the whaling industry when there’s actual money to be made elsewhere? Conservation has helped the whales begin to bounce back from the edge of extinction. Will tourism be the means of keeping it from happening again?

Andy Eliason is a Web Content Specialist at 10x Marketing. You can learn more about whale watching at Cape Cod, Cape Cod tourism, and other things to do in Cape Cod from Cape Cod Online.