Ronin,
I take back my words on the dolphin part. Maybe not many know about the dolphin hunting. However, they are a bit ignorant if they don't know about whaling. Nobody will openly support whaling in front of a westerner who is clearly not happy with it, especially when there is a language barrier. That's not to say all of your friends support it, I'm just saying it's hard to know.
As I said, for many Japanese people, whaling isn't their tradition or culture. I guestimate maybe 1% of Japanese people are from the areas where they eat whales. Still, if you google it, you'll see anti-whaling is very unpopular in Japan.
捕鯨 世論 - Google Search
Greenpeace only has 5500 members in Japan which is very few considering it has 260 million members worldwide. Many Japanese people, including myself, take a stance "I don't eat whale, but I don't hold with the activists. Who do they think they are to think their moral standard is higher than Japanese's?". It's interesting you assumed it was "liberal" to be anti-whaling because a lot of people are taking it as racism in Japan. You, Ronin, are talking to a scuba diver who has never had whale before, and grew up in an area where whaling is not a tradition or a part of the local culture. I have no reason to support whaling except that anti-whaling activists are often egoistic and their activities are inciting racism on both sides.
Anyway, both of your reasonings are flawed so you should stop supporting anti-whaling activists.
- So called "dolphin" meat is not poisonous. I already showed you the data. The mercury level is about the same as other fish. This is not to say there wasn't any contaminated meat, but there is no reason to assume dolphin meat is more poisonous than other fish.
- The fact you don't support factory farming doesn't have anything to do with this argument. The US consumes 10 times more meat than Japan do. Why do the activists go all the way to the end of the world to protest against whaling that produce only 0.03% of meat, i.e. kill less than 0.03% of lives, the US do? Why don't they sabotage their local slaughterhouse? Why don't Discovery channel air "Cow War" or "Chicken War" or "Pig War", and attack their local farmers? Come on, we are talking about more than 30,000 times the lives here. That's only logical right? The reason is that it is "culturally" more acceptable to kill cows or chickens or pigs than whales in the West, well, more specifically, in the English speaking countries. It IS about whalers versus anti-whalers, and it IS about some western culture versus Japanese culture. It's a crusade against whaling. And crusade is a synonym for racism and massacre in some parts of the world.
The question is, what makes you, or anybody, be the judge on what human race can kill and eat? It's not just about whales. Some people think animals can not be killed, but fish is OK. Some think killing anything that moves is cruel. There are some who think only taking windfalls is appropriate. And there is the extreme. Some think killing bacteria is a sin and refuse to drink water in order to avoid taking the lives of them, and subsequently die. It's all arbitrary. Sure, dolphins are cute and I don't want them to be killed. But you, not Ronin specifically but you in general, don't need to be on a high horse preaching about how your morals is better than others.