One of my brothers said that when he was the new guy on the whaling crew in Barrow he ended up with the traditional duty, which was bear watch. He couldn't believe how close the bears were allowed by his mentor, considering how quickly they can cover ground.
Although I like shooting I'm not much of a hunter, but I don't begrudge people who like hunting, slob hunters aside, as there is no difference between paying to shoot critters because you like to, or paying other people to kill critters because you like to eat them. Deciding to call some animal 'food' doesn't give you some sort of moral high ground, as with few exceptions you eat critters because you want to, not beacuse you have to. In addition hunting in some areas is about the ONLY way that animals end up being protected in numbers. That being said it is our responsibilty to protect the world that we live in, as opposed to viewing everything only in the amount of money that can be made and acting like a bunch of Orcs on the landscape.
Whales can usually be hunted in small numbers and still thrive, but commercial whaling is another matter. When my brother was in Fairbanks for awhile he said that the 'nut and berry' crowd had a number of vegetarians, and they often just stayed indoors in the winter as it was hard to get enough calories on the typical vegetarian diet and be active outoors when it was cold out.