既然没必要，为什么还要捕鲸？Why hunt whales if it's not necessary?

The chairman of a Japanese whaling association was quoted recently as Japan was lifting its 30-year ban on commercial whaling.

日本时隔30年重启商业捕鲸。

"I'm so moved, my heart is shaking," Yoshifumi Kai said on July 1, as hunting ships headed out to sea on their mission of death.

肩负着死亡使命的捕鲸船驶向大海，日本小型捕鲸协会会长贝良文在7月1日表示：“我太感动了，心跳剧烈。”

His was not the only heart that was shaking. Mine was shaking, too, but for different reasons. 

他不是唯一心跳剧烈的人，我的心也在剧烈跳动，但原因不同。

I fear for the endangered species of the world — for the great giants of our planet, the elephants and whales, and for any creature great or small that is the victim of thoughtless human depredation or greed.

我为世界上的珍惜物种——地球上的庞然大物大象、鲸鱼，以及牺牲在人类掠夺和贪婪下的动物——感到恐惧。

It's not as though humans must kill whales to eat. In Japan, for example, it's down to "tradition". The only survival at stake is that of the whales, some species of which have been hunted to near extinction.

人类杀鲸鱼并非为了吃肉。日本称捕鲸为“传统”，一些物种已经被捕杀至灭绝。

Immediately after World War II, things were different. At that time, the Japanese people in their bombed-out land, desperately needed a reliable source of protein, and whales provided it.

二战后，日本人迫切需要可靠的蛋白质来源，鲸鱼肉就是选择。

Today things are different. Whales are no longer a necessary food source anywhere in the world, though they continue to generate pocket change for a handful of restaurants or other businesses. It's like ivory making money for poachers. 

然而现在情况不一样了，鲸鱼肉不再是世界任何一个地方的必需食物。虽然一些饭馆和生意依然用鲸鱼肉挣钱，就像盗猎者获取象牙一样。

But with whales, the devastation isn't secret. It takes place in the open, backed by the authority of the Japanese government.

但鲸鱼承受的灾难并不是秘密。日本政府支持公开捕杀鲸鱼。

The whale hunts have not gone over well with people in China. For example, more than 90 percent of Chinese people in an online poll reported by this newspaper in 2006 said the country should "resolutely oppose Japanese whaling".

不过中国人反对捕鲸。2006年中国日报曾做过网络调查，90%以上的人认为中国应该“坚决反对日本捕鲸”。

When the International Whaling Commission, of which Japan was a member, imposed a global moratorium on commercial whale hunting in 1986, a fig-leaf was allowed for so-called scientific research. 

国际捕鲸组织1986年开始禁止全球商业捕鲸，但规定又允许任何国家以科学研究的名义捕鲸。

But let's be honest: Science can be about virtually anything — even counting whale barnacles. Only a handful of papers were ever produced by Japan. Meanwhile, the science exception in the rules allowed whaling to continue outside Japan's economic zones.

但实话说，科学可以覆盖任何领域——包括计算鲸鱼肚子上的藤壶。日本基本没发表过几篇鲸鱼相关科学著作。同时，日本经济区之外的地区也利用科学之名捕鲸。

Scientists, of course, don't need a whole whale carcass if they've killed it merely to count barnacles. So the meat and blubber of those animals was conveniently processed and sold commercially in Japan.

如果只是为了计算藤壶数量，科学根本不需要一整条鲸鱼尸体。所以鲸鱼肉在日本就很容易进入商业用途。

No sense wasting a perfectly good dead whale, right?

没道理浪费一条完美的鲸鱼尸体，对吧？

Now Japan has withdrawn from the IWC, and full-bore commercial hunting is on again, which makes the hearts of those few who stand to profit palpitate with joy.

日本现在退出了世界捕鲸组织，恢复了商业捕鲸行为，让少部分获利者激动不已。

I've been a hunter myself, and I don't object to the practice if the conditions are right. Killing animals should be done out of necessity only, in my view, and not for sport or tradition.

我自己也曾打猎。只要情况允许，我不在乎猎物是什么。我认为杀害动物只能出于必需的理由，而非运动或传统。

In my youth, I hunted deer many times in the wilds of Utah in the United States. I eventually figured out that the expense and trouble of hunting just isn't worth it — the game licensing, the preparations for an extended camping trip, the cost of fuel, the difficulty of finding a deer and getting a clear shot with a rifle, then gutting it, cooling the meat with snow and carrying it out of a remote, mountainous area to a butcher shot that can cut the meat properly (for a fee).

我年轻时曾多次在美国犹他州的野外猎鹿。但最终我发现打猎带来的花费和麻烦超过它自身的价值——执照、野营、汽油、找鹿、近距离开枪、开膛破肚、用雪冷却鹿肉、把鹿肉带离荒凉的山区、花钱找屠夫切鹿肉。

It's cheaper to just buy beef from the supermarket. And beef tastes better than venison anyway.

相比之下，去超市买牛肉更便宜，而且牛肉味道也比鹿肉好。

And so I gave up big game hunting. The truth is, I really don't enjoy killing beautiful animals. The only exception for me would be eating. If I must kill to eat, I have no problem.

所以我放弃了打猎，而且我并不喜欢杀害美丽的动物。唯一的例外是我需要吃它们的肉。如果我为了吃东西而必须杀掉动物，那没有问题。

But the Japanese don't need to kill whales to eat. They cite culture as reason to kill these magnificent animals of the deep — not even profit or GDP. 

但日本人并不需要捕鲸吃肉。他们认为捕鲸是文化传统，甚至对GDP都没贡献。

Were it not for the $463 million received in annual government subsidies, the whale hunting industry would drown overnight. That's because there's no business model. Few people want to eat whale anymore.

如果没有政府每年4.63亿美元的资助，日本捕鲸产业一夜就得覆灭。捕鲸产业没有商业模式，想吃鲸鱼肉的人也很少。

Japanese whale consumption in 1964 was 154,000 tons. By 2017, that had fallen to a minuscule 3,000 tons. That's about one big bite of whale per person annually in Japan.

日本人在1964年消耗了15.4万吨鲸鱼肉，而到了2017年，这个数字下降到3000吨，相当于人均一年咬一大口鲸鱼。

Clearly, it's a dying industry, or, more accurately, it's already dead. It's a zombie industry that has no reason to keep staggering forward. Traditions that are no longer observed by any but a tiny fraction of society are not really traditions, are they? They are just so much dead meat.

很明显，捕鲸是夕阳产业，更准确地说，已经是消亡产业了。这个产业没有前进的理由。只有一小部分人遵循的传统就不是传统了。

I understand that the whale hunting tradition has its origins in the need to eat. But time marches on. It's time to break with the past. Some people in Japan need a good shaking.

我明白捕鲸传统源于吃肉的需求，但时代前进了，该与过去切割。一些日本需要清醒了。