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AGAINST THE CURRENT
The
Ferocious Isles:
"Something is rotten in the State of Denmark"
Hamlet.
Act 1. Scene IV
By Captain Paul
Watson
Halfway between the Scottish Shetlands and Iceland can be found
twenty-two beautifully rugged, rocky green islands that make
up the Faeroes. Seventeen of these islands are inhabited by some
45,000 people who enjoy one of the highest per capita standards
of living in the world.
The capital
city, Torshavn, is home to one of the word's oldest parliaments.
In her streets can be found the most expensive automobiles, parked
in front of shops that sell the latest luxury goods from around
the globe. On the sidewalk, the young people dress like their
peers in Copenhagen or London, with pierced noses, hair colors
that reflect the entire spectrum, and designer clothing ripped
and torn in the appropriate places. In outward appearance, it
is no different from any other modern European city.
The Faeroese
are a prosperous people thanks to their successful fishing industry
and a fleet that scours the North Atlantic for the living silver
treasure that they catch, process, and export.
Although
the Faeroes are a Danish Protectorate, the Faeroese speak a Nordic
tongue that more closely resembles Icelandic. For a millennium
they have lived under Viking rule. After the longboats, the Norwegians
ruled, followed by the Danes to the present day. For the last
two decades, the Faeroese have debated independence from Denmark.
The only obstacle to this goal is the one billion kroner in annual
subsidies that Denmark provides.
This is
a cozy relationship for the Faeroes. Denmark is a member of the
European Union but the Faeroes are not. Thus they avoid the negative
aspects of EU membership and benefit from indirect trade with
the EU by having a close trading relationship with Denmark.
In short
the Faeroese have a quiet little economic paradise. They have
no unemployment, completely subsidized government and social
welfare programs, a rich resource base, and a viable culture.
It's not
a bad place to live either. The Gulf Stream provides a mild climate
all year round, despite a latitude of sixty-one degrees north.
The islands have an airport and ferry service to Scotland, Norway,
and Denmark. During the summer, tourism is a thrlvlng industry.
Behind
this veneer of paradise, however, is a dirty little secret: the
Grind.
"It
is a gift from God," former Prime Minister Atli P. Dam told
me once. "The Grind is a strong and old tradition."
Faeroese government spokesperson Arni Olafsson told me years
ago that the Grind was the very foundation of the Faeroese culture.
"It is what makes us Faeroese," he said.
Yet to
any civilized observer from the outside, the Grind is one of
the bloodiest, most cruel, and most savage traditions in the
world "It is an obscenity," the late Sir Peter Scott
once said to me. Scott, an ornithologis, who once studied birds
on the Faeroes, was the son of famed Antarctic explorer Sir Robert
Falcon Scott. "I think it's incredibly cruel. The killing
is a dreadful thing. It's a wicked thing to do to any animal.
Tradition cannot justify this behavior," said Scott.
In the
Faeroes, the Grind is practically a religion. It is ritualized
brutality and traditional torture, punctuated by public drunkenness.
The victim is the defenseless pilot whale, whose migrations throughout
the year, especially during the summer months, bring the pods
into the waters near the Faeroes, where they are herded into
bays, stabbed, speared, pelted with stones, slashed with outboard
motor blades, and slowly and joyfully slaughtered. They die amidst
the laughter of children and the drunken bellows of their hooligan
fathers.
Each year,
between 1,500 and 3,500 pilot whales die in scarlet agony on
the beaches of the Faeroe Islands. Children rip the fetuses from
the pregnant mothers and hold them up like trophies. Men hack
through the necks of the struggling whales to sever the spinal
cords, a process that can take ten minutes or more. The bays
turn blood red, and the whale carcasses litter the shore, their
purple-black guts spilling onto the sand.
Although
the Faeroese do eat whale meat, the kill provides much more meat
than can be consumed. Traditionally, the whales provided subsistence
to a people far removed from the rest of the world, before imports
and the emergence of their lucrative export market. Today, with
no practical need to kill whales, the slaughter has intensified.
This is because the Faeroese now enjoy a high standard of living
and thus more leisure time - today they have more time to hunt
whales for pleasure. Today it is a sport, big-game hunt, and
an orgy of blood, providing entertainment and an outlet for aggression,
an excuse to get together, drink, and indulge in a community
festival.
"Murder
most foul, as in the best it is. But this foul, strange and unnatural"
Hamlet. Act 1, Scene 5
The largest
whale hunt in history is now done for fun, not survival. A history
of the kill figures, all meticulously recorded in the Faeroese
archives tells the story.
In the
eighteenth century, the annual kill was around 500 whales per
year. In the nineteenth century, the annual kill was approximately
900 per year. Those rose to approximately 1,5OO whales per year
from 1936 to 1980. Since 1980, however, the average kill has
jumped, between 2,500 and 3,500 whales per year. In 1986, half
the whales taken, some 1,500 whales, were killed and the bodies
towed out to sea and dumped.
The Faeroese
insist they eat all the meat. Simple mathematics reveals this
to be an impossibility. An average annual kill of 3,000 whales
means one whale for every fifteen Faeroes citizens. If one whale
provides a conservative estimate of two tons of meat per whale,
this translates into 266 pounds of meat per year per man, woman,
and child on the islands. To complicate these statistics, the
Faeroese have passed a law limiting the eating of whale meat
to only once a week. This measure was taken to reduce the level
of mercury toxicity in the Faeroese people. This means that to
utilize every whale, each citizen must conservatively consume
5.1 pounds of whale meat each week, and this would have to legally
be consumed in one day.
When one
takes into account that many people in Faeroes especially in
the main city of Torshaven, do not consume much, if any, whale
meat, the claim of total consumption moves into the realm of
the fantastic. In addition, the annual sales in the Faeroes of
beef, mutton, lamb, pork, chicken, and fish demonstrate that
this is not a protein-deficient community.
The simple
fact of the matter is that these whales are slaughtered for sport
and there is no subsistence or economic motivation to justify
the hunt at all.
The pilot
whale ( Globicephala melaena ) is a highly complex, intelligent,
and sociable animal that can reach a length of twenty feet. They
are easy to round up. The usual practice is to locate the leader
of the pod; this whale is then separated with a blade the Faeroese
call a vakn and stabbed with a long knife called a grindaknivur
. The wounded whale is then harassed with repeated strikings
from fastakast , a rock attached to a rope. The whale is thus
wounded, stressed, and forced toward shore. The rest of the pod
follows. Young whales, especially babies, are wounded, forcing
the mothers to remain nearby, ready for the vicious soknarongul
, a heavy iron hook that is imbedded in their blow-holes.
There
is nothing pretty about the slaughter. The Faeroese however,
remain unashamed. They even sell postcards of the kill, showing
the Faeroese flag proudly flapping over a blood-filled bay full
of dying whales.
"No
jocund health that Denmark drinks today."
Hamlet. Act 1. Scene 2
Ironically,
the Grind is a threat to the people of the Faeroes themselves,
Pilot whales are notoriously polluted which heavy metals, especially
mercury. Marjun Hansardottir of the Faeroes Health Department
is worried. "The mercury content in the Faeroese people
is very high, far higher than in the Danes," she said. In
fact, the Faeroese have the international distinction of having
the highest levels of mercury in their bodies. The Grind is actually
killing many Faeroese. But traditions die hard and the cultural
motivation to eat whales seems to be stronger than self-preservation.
It's very much like smoking. Everyone thinks that it will affect
the other person and never themselves.
The Faerose
are so defensive of their Grind that they have violently opposed
anyone who attempts to interfere with it. I disrupted the Faeroese
hunts in 1985 and 1986. Our 1986 campaign was documented by the
BBC in a film called Black Harvest .
The Faerose
became very frustrated with our use of sound to divert whale
pods away from the islands. In retaliation they launched an attack
on my ship and crew, and we found ourselves in a defensive battle
against Faeroese police armed with guns and tear gas which we
countered with cannon-loads of chocolate and cream pie filling.
The Faeroese
were so angry that I was actually charged with attempted murder
in Denmark. However, when the newspapers in Copenhagen learned
that we had pied the police, the Danish public found the whole
affair hilarious, and the charges against me were dropped. We
were able to keep the whales from being killed while we were
there, and our presence in 1986 resulted in a lower kill for
that year. But the hunt continues, and even though the whale
populations are declining, the Faeroese have shown no desire
to end the killing.
Over the
last few years, the Sea Shepherd Conservation society has organized
a successful boycott of Faeroese fish by three major supermarket
chains in Germany. No some 20,000 stores are refusing to sell
Faeroese fish products. This has already cost the Faeroese millions
of dollars. Sea Shepherd is now focusing on putting pressure
on the large Dutch-based multinational Unilever. This company
is the largest distributor of Faeroese fish, and if we can convince
Unilever to join the boycott, then we can force an end to the
whale hunt through economic pressure.
In Europe
we have focused on turning the Unilever mascot a little cute
bear called Little Ruby, into a possessed killer of whales. We
have called for a boycott of Unilever companies like Dove soap,
Best Foods, Slimfast and ironically, the Ben and Jerry's Ice
Cream Company. Unilever purchased Ben and Jerry's in March 2000,
and this placed America's most famous environmentally concerned
company in a very embarrassing position. Ben and Jerry's is now
directly associated with the largest whale slaughter on the planet.
Both Unilever
and Ben and Jerry's
have ignored all letters and calls from the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society. In response, numerous groups and organizations have
organized protests in front of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream parlors.
To focus attention on this campaign to pressure Unilever and
Ben and Jerry's, I have taken my ship to the Faeroes to patrol
all summer with the objective of diverting pilot whale pods away
from the island.
My ship
Ocean Warrior entered Faeroese waters on July 7 for a summer
of face-to-face opposition with the cruel and bloody whale killers
of the Ferocious Isles. I'll report our results in the next issue
of Ocean Realm.
UPDATES
ON PREVIOUS TOPICS:
In a follow-up to some of my past features in Ocean Realm , I
am pleased to pass on a couple of interesting updates.
Aboriginal
Whaling: Concerning the Makah whale hunt in Washington State.
I wrote last year that the hunt was illegal under international
law. I also wrote that the hunt proceeded without a proper environmental
assessment. In June 2000 the ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals
ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated
federal environmental laws in it's rush to grant the Makah the
right to kill whales.
The court
was very critical of NMFS in the ruling: "Can the federal
defendants now be trusted to take a clear-eyed hard look at the
whaling proposal's consequences required by law, or will the
environmental assessment be a classic Wonderland case of first-the-verdict,
then-the trail?" the court asked "We have decided it
is appropriate not only to require a new E.A., but to require
that it be done under the circumstances that ensure and objective
evaluation free of the previous taint."
The Makah
hunt is now legal under United States law. The Sea Shepherd Society,
Breach International, the West Coast Anti-Whaling Society, and
other organizations are monitoring the Makah to ensure they do
not violate the ruling.
Baby Harp
Seals: In Autumn 1999, I wrote "Scapegoat for Fools"
about the effort in Newfoundland to raise the seal kill quotas
to punish the seals for human over-exploitation of fish. The
quota was set at 250,000 despite loud calls from Newfoundland
to set it at over one million. As it turns out, the Newfoundland
sealers killed 94,000 seals. There is no market for seal products,
and with the economic motivation dwindling, the effort to kill
seals was diminishing considerably.
Caviar
Smuggling: In "The Caviar Conspiracy." I wrote that
the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was appealing to the Justice
Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Agency for jail sentences
for caviar smugglers. Up to the time of the publication of that
article, not a single caviar-smuggler had been jailed. On June
6, 2000, U.S. District Judge Frederic Block sentenced Eugeniusz
Kozcuk of Stamford, Connecticut, to twenty months In a federal
prison and fined him $25,000. Kozcuk also forfeited $70,000 and
2,000 pounds of caviar valued at two million dollars. Kozcuk
was found guilty of conspiracy, smuggling and violating the Lacey
Act, a federal law protecting wildlife taken, transported, or
sold in violation of any US law or treaty.
This
article appeared in the Summer 2001 issue of Ocean Realm
magazine and appears here by permission.
P.O. Box
2616, Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (USA) Tel: 360-370-5650 Fax: 360-370-5651
Copyright © 2004 Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society. All rights reserved.
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