Former Whaler Turned Whale Watcher

[Mulboyne]

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Interview with Nagaoka starts about two minutes in.

The Nation: Japanese boatman drops harpoon to turn whale-watcher
Tomohisa Nagaoka owes a lot to whales, having killed thousands during a long career as a whaler, but he has traded his harpoon for binoculars, convinced many Japanese would rather watch than eat them. "I feel as if whales are part of my body," said Nagaoka, 75, who was born and raised in this former whaling port on Japan's southwestern island of Shikoku. "Whales are a gift from nature." Nagaoka, who is permanently suntanned with deep wrinkles etched into his forehead, sails out with tourists on his "No. 2 Suehiro-Maru" fishing boat with a whale painted on its bow...Nagaoka, once renowned among his colleagues for his skill with a harpoon, decided in his mid-50s to become one of Japan's first whale watching navigators "...I know more about whales than most people," Nagaoka said. "I know what kind of whales they are, where they swim and how they swim. I'd heard that whale watching was about to begin in Japan, so I thought, 'Let's give it a try'"...Nagaoka conceded that whalers were decimating the world's population of the mammals, particularly blue whales which are the biggest animals on Earth and are now an endangered species. But he said Japan still had the right to catch whales. "Overhunting is no good," he said. "We used to catch as many as 60 blue whales a day, which was even beyond the mother ship's processing capacity, and some of them were spoiled due to rotting...As chief harpoonist of his fleet, Nagaoka shot more than 4,000 whales, mainly in the Antarctic Ocean. "When you hunt whales, you should have no mercy. I tried to harpoon whales for the sake of my company and my family," said Nagaoka, who has two sons...more...

Interview continues about a minute in:

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