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Gareth Cook

Save the whales . . . going once

What if whale lovers could buy whale hunters’ permits?

By Gareth Cook

 |  Globe Columnist  

  January 15, 2012

Our planet’s approach to whale conservation has been on sorry display in the waters around Antarctica. Massive Japanese ships plow through the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean, harpooning minke whales and dragging their bleeding bodies aboard to be butchered for consumption back home. In these same waters, much smaller ships try to stop the Japanese. A new proposal by three academics aims to end a deadlock over whaling - a decades-long argument pitting “whaling is wrong’’ against “you have no right to end our cultural tradition.’’

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