I have no idea whether that is true, but I'm not sure it's a valid criteria either.
Look, whales are magnificent creatures. 1 whale also provides a lot of meat.
Whales never starved people to death or shot them for trying to scrounge food for others.
Neither has any other animal.
Let's just acknowledge that you have a "soft spot" for whales, and leave it at that.
Like Teddy Roosevelt and others, people can be conservationists and also avid hunters at the same time. I don't see any contradiction there.
But if a whale stood between me and starvation for my family, I'd kill and eat it in a heartbeat.
If people had to hunt for their own meat, instead of having others doing the dirty work for them, there would be a lot less consumption of meat in this world.
Neither we nor the Japanese are starving. The Japanese have made it a point to kill as many whales as they can get away with and they don't need the meat - they are even operating at a loss to prove a point. They kill and eat porpoises (as in the Cove) and they are causing the near extinction of Bluefin Tuna worldwide to satisfy their hunger for sushi.
The Japanese are exerting raw power to get what they want and if the only thing standing in their way is a misbegotten, shaggy bunch of hippies, then I'm all for them.