The Faroe Islands

Hello everyone, my name is Brian Vitocruz, although this is an Australian based movement the founder of this movement, Teah Hammet, my cousin has tasked me in providing environmental news regarding anything ocean related. I am currently a senior in high school, and I have been dead set on working as a Marine Biologist for as long as I remember. I currently work at a nonprofit aquarium, the Aquarium of the Pacific, which is located about an hour away from Los Angeles. I have been an advocate for aquatic life and the preservation and protection of the ocean, and over that time the pursuit of that knowledge led me to find the many injustices and crimes against the ocean and its inhabitants. Although I will cover things like whale strandings and oil spills, but I also want to show you the crimes that not many people see or notice, the injustices that get swept under the rug to be forgotten or overlooked. The environmental news that sometimes doesn’t get into the main news. Keep an open mind about more controversial issues. I will not only give you my opinion but the facts behind them, and those issues be “black and white” as many larger news sites clearly suggests. I am not the best writer, but I truly want to share with you all the plight of the ocean. I also do quite a bit of research on your local oceans and the events taking place over in Australia

Since Sea Shepherd is based in Australia, you might already know about their exploits in Japan, but as for my first article I want to explore Sea Shepherd’s fight against the Faroese people. A small island nation off the coast of Denmark, the cold, rugged, and dangerous landscape harbors a small amount of people. The wildlife there although beautiful seabirds, and unique ocean life, is the target of this piece. Every year the migration of Globicephala melas, otherwise known as the long finned pilot whales pass these islands, and despite the Faroese people having ample amount of food and access to modern means, they brutally and inhumanely slaughter thousands of these animals. Before I get into the process and irrational reasoning behind their actions, many argue that it is acceptable because these whale are not listed under the endangered list, even though the population hangs in the balance of what we do to them. But this is not an issue about saving a species, this is a moral issue. A long time ago we viewed whales as giant beasts, sea monsters, killers, but now science and current common knowledge has shed the light on these gentle giants, and has found that these animals have developed social systems, self-awareness, and the ability to show compassion for other living things. I have seen that magnificence first hand both in zoological facilities and in the natural habitats, (we will cover that on a later topic). But no matter your views on captivity, killing of intelligent life is not justified in my opinion. But the Faroese people have obviously prepared rebuttals to this statements.

The brutal and graphic way they do kill the whale uses a variety of tactics. Starting of they use machete like knifes to cut the whale’s spinal cord at the head. They claim that this is a humane process, but documented by many environmental groups like Sea Shepherd that the instant death is not as quick as they imply, there are times where they can miss the spinal cord, or do not go all the way through so the whale bleeds to death from a horrible half severing to the head. Unborn calves are removed from their mothers and there have been circulating pictures of small children after the slaughter, playing with them like dolls. Children step and walk on the dead whales like a bounce house. This is not a healthy practice for small children to go through, in any culture. This also desensitizes them to the killing of these animals. Later on there are certain “initiations” that take place where a boys are taught to kill the whales.

Other than ethics, their own doctors and other officials have recommended that women and small children either refrain from eating pilot whale, or at least limit the consumption to as little as possible. There is a term used in science called “bio-magnification” meaning that the higher up the food chain an animal is the more concentrated certain pollutants in an ecosystem are. Pilot whales are one of the apex predators of the region, they have little to now natural predators, and eat a wide variety of food from fish to squid. When chemicals like mercury, PCB, and other dangerous and toxic pollutants get eaten by small plankton, they work their way up the food chain all the way up to the pilot whales, but that concentration is much higher than that of the plankton or small fish. This makes it extremely dangerous for us as humans to eat, while the pilot whale is generally unaffected.

Finally, if the brutal killing, and health concerns are not enough to deter you away from their practices, I believe there is a part the people there tend to overlook, because they view these animals simply as a food source. But these living, thinking, sensitive creatures have a huge sad struggle they must face before they are killed. The process to coral the pilots is a long and brutal one. For us it might sound like herding cattle but there are some inhumane differences. Firstly, during the season a boat is sent out to find a pod, signaling to other boats when a pod is found. Hundreds of ships of various sizes surround the pilots. They use the whales crowning achievement against them, their echolocation, and acute hearing to torcher them forcing them to

comply to the boats, they use hundreds of blasting engines, the hit the water, the ship’s horns blow, they shout, this puts the whales in a crisis, they try to protect their young, and after a long grueling procession to the shore, the whales are then gaffed through the blowhole and are dragged by more men awaiting on the beach to the shore where the killing begins. During this killing, which has been documented hundreds of times, you can hear past the screaming whales, people laughing. I grew up with two of them at a marine park for 16 years, I’ve seen the intelligence and love the animals have. Regardless of your views on captivity, those two pilot whales have inspired me to fight for their wild counter parts. When I see their eyes, I can tell they are thinking, living beings. Those animals are extremely old, rescued from a smaller amusement park, and will live out the rest of their days in the love of their trainers. But the fate of their wild counterparts hangs in the balance. Australia has already advocated and fought with Japan multiple times about their whaling practices, it seems like my country wants to remain silent on the matter, but don’t let your country be too. While extinction is a real and heartbreaking thing, happening to so many animals around the world, we don’t want to start another animal on that road. US has banned the capture or killing of any marine mammal, all the animals you see in any US park are old, rescued, or born there. The fight needs to be taken to those countries who continue to kill and capture these magnificent animals today. But that article is for a later date, it is time to take action against the Faroe Islands and their practices.

#Environment