OCEAN REALM
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, Torshaven, 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.

Bleibt nicht viel zu sagen, ausser: Fuck them und www.seashepherds.org (die Beschützer der Wale) zu besuchen für aktuelle Info oder Unterstützung.