This piece debunks quite a bit of propaganda:
To find out more about what actually happens on these islands, check out this website (everything’s in English).
I’m still trying to figure out what’s so wrong about all of this.
Long-finned pilot whales aren’t endangered.
The Faroese do all they can to ensure the slaughter is humane and the harvest is sustainable.
So what’s the point?
I just don’t get it.
But then it’s very hard to get me worked up about animal rights campaigns anyway.
I think they are nothing more than major distractions set out by con men.
And I’ve yet to find one that didn’t wind up being an extensive con.
As small children in England during the second world war my school mates and I were fed whale meat during the lunch break. The Ministry of Food broadcast that it was the way to avoid starvation. The texture and taste were, to us, disgusting and we could not have been all that desperate as most of it was left, much to the cook’s annoyance. Various things added to disguise the taste were not very succesful, I recall. Maybe the lack of refrigeration had something to do with that.
In those days there were ‘pig bins’ left out on every street for weekly collection by the local authoritry workmen who then delivered this awful goo to pig farmers. The smell was horrific!
During the night, we were woken up not just by the luftwaffe but also by the sound of iron pig bins being knocked over by dogs and foxes. They must have been truly desperate, those canids!
It’s a good website and the whale numbers in catch figures aren’t outrageous. Now, my Q is, if pressure is taken off the Faroes because of cultural tradition as well as the limited resources of a small northern island, what will other small island nations think? What about Japan? Norway? They are far more numerous and as far as I ever knew, they were among the few major nations that systematically buck the International Whaling Commission moratoriums?
People are like children. They finger – point and say
“Hey! They can do it so why can’t we? Why is their ‘culture’ better than mine?’ ”
Will there be another slippery slope that COULD lead to endangering pilots and other, already whale populations.
Sure, you could say there is science helping to make population counts and maintain sustainable numbers, even in the face of science, people can be, and often are, made to feel guilty about interfering with “culture” the way they are made to feel guilty about interfering with religion ( just another form of culture really, but not one I subscribe to).
At least take the emphasis off of tradition and onto “Hey! These people don’t have a lot of options.”
What other meats do they eat BTW? I mean, can they farm goats? Goats are commonly eaten worldwide and there are varieties to suit nearly every climate, as they are incredibly hardy and can live off of nearly any landscape.
The key has to be sustainability. If we’re over-harvesting any species, then we need moratoria on collecting those species. If a particular ecosystem is under threat then we need to close harvesting on that site until it’s back in balance.
I personally would probably draw the line at hunting cetaceans, for the same reason that I wouldn’t hunt chimps (and other great apes) or elephants–they’re highly intelligent and appear to be self-aware. But since I do eat meat, I have to watch where I throw stones..
What if pilot whales fell off the earth regardless? What if say, some horrid virus struck enough of a blow to put them on the road to extinction? Or too much PCB buildup in fatty tissues? What backup plans do the Faroes have? I know some folks don’t like arguments like this for a few reasons. Some say “It’s irrelevant because that’s not the reality now.” Or “IF it happens, of COURSE they’ll adapt.” But it’s easier to adapt when you have some sense of “What if?”
And extinctions happen all the time. Extinctions happen irrespective of human behavior; always have.
I see no reason to stop them because of what might happen but might not. Also, why do we have to yield to childish arguments? The culture in question is not doing anyone any harm. A nation that threatens animals with extinction is not in the same league as one that maintains a sustainable harvest.
“extinctions happen irrespective of human behaviour”. Maybe, but tell that to the dodo, the great auk, the carolina parakeet, the thylacine, the passenger pigeon and – almost – the bison and those native Americans who lived off them sustainably, plus many many more past and future, some by unintended consequences. Take for example the Japanese scenario, pretending to be taking “scientific” samples to supply sushi bars and witnessing the effects of nuclear radiation on their wildlife as we speak.
Yeah well, exctinctions like that one are why I posted my Q, but to say that not all extinctions are caused by man is only being fair. Also to be fair, I kind of messed up, because I could have sworn I thought I saw somewhere in these whale blogs that the whales the Faroes hunt have populations of 250,000, but that is the short finned pilot whale and populations of long-finned whales in the southern hemisphere.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/pilotwhale_longfinned.htm#distribution
Range often creates speciation. I haven’t looked that much yet into whether or not sub-species have occured from any resulting isolation, but somewhere in the link there is an note that there was once a sub-species in Japanese waters, but it is now extinct.
Hm.
Even 3x as many whales, such as what make up northern populations, can be obliterated. I am I’m grateful the Faroes have so much respect for this species.
As the IWC does not currently offer protections, there are likely other ,more practical reasons more people do not take a share of pilots, such as the difficulty of reaching them? I can only surmise at this point.
Kathy, what you say is what I had in mind when I mentioned that I know some people don’t like arguments such as “What if” but I don’t consider that childish. Or let me put it another way, it was not mentioned as mere tit-for-tat argument for argument’s sake.
Granted, I was thinking of the 250K number, not 780K. I also had not read anywhere on this blog at the time that the Faroes live well and have supermarkets with the same options found in the USA, Canada, Oz, etc.
Still, I still ask, what else can the Faroes use for fresh meat. Do they fill their own markets with locally raised meat, or is it imported? What is the cost of the imports? Is it too expensive for a lot of Faroes to eat market meat due to transportation costs, or is it worth it to offset risk of eating contaminated whale meat and blubber? Goats do well in harsh climates with little vegetation.
Are goats raised there? CAN they be if they are not currently?
“What if’s” are not childish if asked in earnest. They are part of planning.
Good, long term thinking is quite lacking in many branches of regulation, legislation, etc.
At least the Faroes seem to have this, but one day as other food sources get slimmer and slimmer, while technology perhaps, advances, these pilots may not belong to the Faroes alone…
or Greenland. I believe they hunt these whales as well?
some we love, some we hate, some we eat…….
Urban Collie Chick gets my vote. The flaw is in the statement:
“Scientific assessments show no indication that catches of pilot whales in the Faroes have any significant impact on the stock.”
The Tragedy of the Commons (originally by Garret Hardin, but subsequently put into mathematical form by many others) shows us that many small actors, none of them doing harm, individually, can kill a resource by their collective action. Giving thumbs up to the Faroes has the effect of legitimizing many other groups who would draw, and over-draw, on the common resource.
Doesn’t work here.
No one else hunts pilot whales like this.
We actually used to do exactly the same thing on the East Coast of the United States.
And they still didn’t go extinct.
Now, the giant baleen whales are something quite different. They are much slower to mature, much slower to reproduce, and even though they are full of meat it’s almost impossible to do a sustainable harvest of them.
Really amazing, considering how much we killed the big whales for all they are made of, that they exist at all. The British first occupied the Falkand Islands as a whaling station, but now we keep them partly for any mineral oil and fish – and to preserve the rights of the islanders of course.
historically, commercial market hunting (as opposed to sport hunting) has been the cause of significant extinctions, and near-extinctions….