Whaling in The Faroe Islands - Controversy

Controversy

Faroese laws and the laws of the international communities allow for the Faroese Pilot Whale drive, while several international special interest groups object to this practice. Proponents of Faroese Pilot Whaling defend it with several arguments. The drive is described as essential to the Faroese culture and provides high quality food to substitute for the islands’ inability to sustain land based agriculture and that the number of whales taken are not harmful to the general Pilot Whale population. The Pilot Whale harvest does not exist as a commercial harvest and is proven as only a communal food distribution among local households; and the harvest of North Atlantic dolphin populations, at the rate of 0.1% per year, is sustainable for the species. In addition, proponents point to the Faroese law which prohibits causing an animal unnecessary harm.

Opponents of the whaling often cite the methods, which involve knives, hooks, and the chasing of whales by powerboats, as being inherently cruel to social animals capable of communication within their species. Opponents further note that most whale drives do not take “a few minutes” as often cited by Faroese government officials. Rather, the kills can sometimes take hours, with the herding process itself lasting more than an hour and resulting in injured whales.

Photographs in the media of the pilot whale drive display a red sea soaked in blood with the bodies of dead pilot whales. These images cause outrage worldwide. Proponents of the whale drive will defend these images saying that blood is a natural consequence of any animal slaughter and that those who have been outraged have been alienated from the process and basic consequences of animal food production.

Proponents of the whale drive further argue that the pilot whale lives its whole life naturally in its natural environment, the Atlantic Ocean, and then is harvested in few minutes, with an average time of death of 30 seconds, in contrast to the fate of conventional livestock. Causing an animal unnecessary or excessive pain and discomfort is also prohibited by the Faroese law.

Opponents argue that the whale drive is not only cruel, but in their of view of the imported food supply to the Faroes, completely unnecessary. The Faroese Ministry of Health, warns against consumption of pilot whale meat, since it has been shown to contain toxic levels of mercury, PCBs, and environmental poisons. The Faroese chief medical officers, Pál Weihe and Høgni Debes Joensen, announced in late 2008 that pilot whale meat and blubber contains too much mercury, PCBs, and DDT derivatives to be safe for human consumption

During the recent history of the grindadráp, the tools of the catch have modernized. Cellular telephones and radio allow the islands to be alerted to a sighting within the course of minutes. The use of private motorboats gives the whalers more speed and maneuverability on the water. The dull blowhole hook, adopted in response to concerns over cruelty, had the additional effect of further increasing the effectiveness of Faroese attempting to beach the whales. In spite of how such improvements to the tools could make the grindadráp more effective, the number of pilot whales caught, both overall and per whale drive, is less than preceding centuries.

In 1989 the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society commissioned an animated public information film (narrated by Anthony Hopkins) to raise awareness on the Faroe Islands' whaling of long-finned pilot whales. The film is one minute long. It caused controversy when it was released. It depicted a Faroese Pilot Whale drive in graphic detail, but it is misleading in a number of ways, e.g. it shows whales being sliced and speared from boats in open water, which does not happen during a Pilot Whale drive in the Faroe Island. It was given a Universal Certificate by the BBFC since it was animated.

Joining the controversy was a book released in 2011, entitled Two Minutes, which was a photo-journalistic account of a Pilot Whale drive in a Faroese bay. The title referred to the time it took a whale to be killed after having been beached. The book met with considerable controversy.