I feel we're far past the point where we need to kill animals to research them. Sure it was necessary in the days of John James Audubon (A shotgun was one of his most important tools) or even in Ed Rickett's days when they fried the fish after they studied them. Especially with a species so large and easy to track as whales are.
Bear in mind I don't have anything against killing animals, I've been known to take a few myself every once in while.I just don't see it as necessary in this case.
Sadly, we'll never meet that objective. Legitimate research on animals will always be part and parcel of anything related to human biology - Medicine. Computer models cannot substitute for quantitative data gleaned from human placebos - pigs, dogs, rodents etc. As a former bio. person it was a harsh reality and I quit that field because it became repugnant.
As per Ricketts...there's a great book about him by an author named Scrap Lundy who looks at the denizens of Cannery Row from first-hand accounts. It'll shed some light on the romantic image of Doc.
While Minke's seem plentiful...it's the sham scientific banner and duplicity that the Japanese fishing industry uses to eek out the last bits of profit on dedicated whaling ships and machinery which has bothered me for decades.
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