Most common reason I can find that people hate whaling is the method.
We dont have much (read: any) exposure to harp seal hunts, which are pretty gruesome, but the whales are simply too big to be killed by explosive-tipped harpoons. it injures them, but they tend to still be very much alive and kicking when they're dragged up into the ships' meatgrinders tailfirst. thats pretty rough.
Cattle, for instance, are at least knocked completely unconscious before having their throats cut. At the abbatoir an hours drive from here, one bloke thought it would be funny not to knock the cow out first. He copped it from the cow bigtime, and then got the sack as well. So it's an industry attempting to be as humane as possible, at least up the road here.
When hunting game, if your first shot doesnt kill it, you put it out of its misery before you begin carving it up. Doesn't happen often with the whales.
Why not, rather than tip harpoons with explosives, tip them with a concoction of deadly drugs? Similar to lethal injection?
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