Kakala o Tonga.com

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The ongoing debate on whether to start whaling again in Tonga has surfaced again after the “Sunday” programme on Television New Zealand last night. The show highlighted both sides of the debate from interviewing a Tongan peoples rep who was against whaling to local fishermen who wanted to claim their ‘traditional’ fishing rights. Both sides are valid, with one side wanting to preserve and grow the industry to benefit the entire country with tourists spending their monies in Tonga to the local fishermen who argued their livelihood needed to be preserved as well as others arguing that the whale meat is a healthy alternative to the fatty foods which fill the shop shelves.

The spillover benefits of the whale-watching industry through job creation and other opportunities are worth $1 million per humpback whale. So you can imagine how many people in Tonga are benefiting from the industry and you can imagine how many more would benefit with its growth. People now have the opportunities to reap the rewards of spending tourists. If you give tourists a reason to spend, they will so the key to develop a business that will address tourist needs. All tourists need to eat, sleep and be entertained somewhere. Tourists also like to take momentos of their Tongan experience home with them arts and crafts so there are lots of opportunities for arts and crafts.

Whale meat as a healthy food is true but the question is, why would people want to cut off their nose to spite their face? If Tonga lifts the ban on whaling, it would definitely scare tourists away and one can only imagine people losing money and their jobs from this scenario. The other interesting observation is that us Tongans are obese people. We have plenty of food in Tonga but the issue is, we need to eat better and make better purchasing decisions and not buy fatty laden foods. Why do we need to hunt whales when there are so many healthy alternatives for us?

Regulation is important too. The key to the whale watching industry’s survival is not only the survival of the whales but also strong and enforced regulation of how the industry is run. If there are too many mavericks in the industry, they could ruin the benefits to everyone through careless operations which could cause a death of a whale or at the extreme, death of an individual.

If we don’t take care of whale watching industry, Tonga could potentially lose one of our most valuable resources to not only our economy but our culture.
All I ask is for anyone who hasn’t been swimming with a whale to try it. Until you have this experience, you will never know what it is that those who are protecting the whales are so passionate about.

Filed under: Business