Anthony L. Hall is a descendant of the Turks & Caicos Islands, international lawyer and political consultant - headquartered in Washington DC - who publishes his own Internet Weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com offering commentaries on current events from a Caribbean perspective

But, upon reading this, it took all the intestinal fortitude I could muster to contain the gastric reflux the very notion of this prospect triggered.  After all, slaughtering whales in our pristine Caribbean Sea conjures all of the putrid ghastliness of slaughtering baby seals on the virgin snow caps of the North Atlantic. 

And, this gruesome prospect is only exacerbated when one considers that our cloistered sea - relative to the sprawling ocean - makes spilling the bloody entrails of whales here analogous to beating the crap out of baby seals in one’s storage freezer.

In fairness to Liburd, however, he probably made this assertion in reaction to the hysteria regional heads of government incited a few weeks ago when they virtually proclaimed that the new US passport regulation, which takes effect in January, will portend our doom.

Indeed, with the dreaded impact of this regulation coming on the heels of the demise of our online gaming industry, which not only followed the devastating split in our banana exports but also presaged the looming threats to our sugar exports, one can see how an ingenuous person like Liburd might consider slaughtering whales an economic palliative. Especially given the disparate impact all of these economic shocks have had on our fellow natives in the Eastern Caribbean States.

Nonetheless, for the record, here’s a little of what I wrote about whaling last June when the International Whaling Commission was debating whether the whale population had grown so much over the past quarter century that the moratorium imposed to save them from extinction is no longer necessary:

“...as one for whom commercial whaling is abhorrent, I resent this misguided attempt to undermine the economy of any country in the Caribbean because its government does not [share this aversion to] commercial whaling….

Instead of getting all hysterical about people hunting whales, our environmentalists would prove far more useful as avengers of Mother Nature if they could get cruise ship operators to hold their crap to dump back home;  instead of behaving like floating elephants in our Caribbean Sea.”

That said, where it reflects enlightened regional interest for our leaders to accept inducements from Japan to support whaling in the Southern Ocean; it’s just penny wise and pound foolish for them to then feel obliged to adopt Japan’s whaling practices in the Caribbean Sea.

Moreover, ironically enough, the most convincing argument against the need for us to engage in whaling is the patently disingenuous, indeed fatuous, argument Liburd proffers in favor of it:

“We have all these tourists coming here, what are we going to feed them with, are we going to ask the United States to send the fish here.”

After all, unless St. Kitts is planning to target Japanese tourists – whose mammalian taste for whales rivals their barbaric taste for horses – one wonders which tourists he’s so concerned about being able to feed?

On a more serious note, whaling in the Caribbean could not be more inconsistent with the macroeconomic factors that drive our tourism sector.  In fact, given the well-documented aversion to hunting, let alone eating, whales amongst the Americans, Canadians and Europeans on whom we rely for our daily bread, we may have to eat those whales ourselves if St Kitts and Nevis inaugurates commercial whaling in our midst.

NOTE:  Is it just me or is there something even culturally  anathema about wanna-be Ahabs in whaling boats crisscrossing cruise ships and luxury yachts to harpoon their Moby Dicks...?

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