For Yves Paccalet, a French naturalist and philosopher who helped push through the 1986 moratorium, the intelligent and highly-social creatures may be so exhausted from their centuries-long combat with humankind that they have simply have given up the fight.

"The psychological consequences of our aggression have compromised their will to live," said Paccalet, who worked extensively with French marine explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Even the remote probability that these magnificent creatures of the sea have some kind of consciousness, as a few thinkers and scientists strongly suggest, makes me shudder in the light of the fact that they are still being aggressively hunted in spite of the moratorium.

study shows that grief activates pleasure (areas of the brain)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/uoc--sst062008.php

Well, shudder and grief are two entirely different experiences...