For people in the Anglosphere, a series of cultural waves has given us a predisposition to wanting to protect dolphins and whales, if we are inclined to form opinions on the subject at all. Though we had whaling in the past, we've had generations of artistic works and experiences, starting with Herman Melville's Moby-Dick made which give us the notion to allow ourselves to recognize some degree of "humanity" in dolphins and whales.
Though Melville did not intentionally write Moby-Dick as an attack against the whaling industry, one of the lasting impacts of the book and its fame is the underlying story of revenge, pride and obsession driving a fruitless wasteful pursuit tied to the superficial image of a man hunting a whale. Even among people who have never read the book, the idea of the whale hunter as villain is present in the culture.
Still, Melville's work only tilled the soil for our empathy for whales and dolphins. Melville still painted a picture of the whale as a violent antagonist, but gave the character depth and personification. And by pitting him against a less than sympathetic human protagonist, it set the stage to see humans and whale as moral equals. But it was later academic study of cetaceans, ocean parks with humans interacting with dolphins, and fictional characters such as Flipper and Willy that planted the seeds for us to see what we usually call "humanity" in these animals, and consider the notion that we may owe them the same moral duty we show to other humans.
The end of whaling as a powerful sector of our own economies has prevented any strong domestic opposition from springing up with reasonable tangental arguments for why whaling ought to be preserved. The convenient production other traditional sources of meat and the rise of petroleum made obsolete the economic necessity of whale hunting in the west, and when moral concerns gained traction, there was little vested economic interest to protect by opposing the bans on whaling.
Still, Melville's work only tilled the soil for our empathy for whales and dolphins. Melville still painted a picture of the whale as a violent antagonist, but gave the character depth and personification. And by pitting him against a less than sympathetic human protagonist, it set the stage to see humans and whale as moral equals. But it was later academic study of cetaceans, ocean parks with humans interacting with dolphins, and fictional characters such as Flipper and Willy that planted the seeds for us to see what we usually call "humanity" in these animals, and consider the notion that we may owe them the same moral duty we show to other humans.
