In replyto the article‘Away from the Grind’byjournalist Jo Cairdinthe February2016 edition of DIVER magazine:

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This article was first published when our charity's original name/branding as 'Sea Shepherd UK' prior to our name change on 18th May 2023 following the removal of Captain Paul Watson from Sea Shepherd entities worldwide (with the exception of the UK, France and Brazil).

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Letter to the Editor of DIVER Magazine

In reply to the article "Away from the Grind" by journalist Jo Caird, in the February 2016 edition of DIVER magazine.

The article, which was generally promoting diving in the Faroe Islands, raised quite a storm among the UK's marine conservation activist community — not because it was promoting diving in the Faroe Islands, but because the author chose to use the piece to talk about the Faroese grindadráp (drive hunts of pilot whales) in a positive light, using factually incorrect statements.

Jo Caird went diving with the only dive centre in the Faroe Islands, which (since the dive-master 'Janus' does not own a boat) uses a co-owned fishing boat that is also used to drive in pods of pilot whales in the grindadráp hunts. This is, arguably in many people's minds, little different to going whale watching on a whaling boat. Just because there is not a harpoon being fired does not change the fact that the boat is also used to hunt whales. In the case of this boat used by the Faroese dive centre, it is used to harass and drive ashore entire pods of pilot whales, which are then slaughtered on any one of the 23 killing bays around the islands — which includes a bay at Klaksvík.

Sea Shepherd UK diver with remains of Pilot whales discarded into the sea in 2011 from a cliff between Vestmanna

Tragically, grindadráp hunts spare not a single member of the pod they target: the entire family of pilot whales is killed, including pregnant females and juveniles.

Jo Caird states in the article: "While critics of the grind denounce it as a brutal abuse of animal rights, unjustifiable in this age of economic prosperity and readily available protein." The grind (actually, the hunt is called the grindadráp, as 'grind' is the name the Faroese use for pilot whales) is indeed an abuse of animal rights, and is anything but humane. In the European Union, including in the Kingdom of Denmark (which owns the Faroe Islands), it is not only illegal to kill pilot whales but illegal even to harass any whales or small cetaceans. The grindadráp hunts drive a pod of pilot whales using RIBs, fishing boats, jet skis and any other watercraft available, using a 'wall of sound' to force the pod into a designated killing bay and right up onto the beach or rocks, where they are killed by hand by waiting Faroese men.

The drive itself causes the whales considerable stress, and the manner of the killing is certainly not humane, and would not be considered so in any European slaughterhouse. There is no need at all for the Faroese to kill pilot whales: they have one of the highest standards of living in Europe and access to all the foods we have imported from all over the world in their stores (you can even buy python meat, buffalo, watermelon and papaya in Tórshavn). In fact, the Faroese know very well — from their chief medical officer and studies over the past decade — that the pilot whale meat and blubber is heavily contaminated with mercury, other heavy metals, and PCBs bio-accumulated over the whales' lifetime as apex predators, from the industrial pollution within the Atlantic Ocean ecosystem.

Jo Caird goes on to say that "defenders cite its importance in Faroese culinary and social history, as well as its role in community cohesion." As for continuing such a needless and inhumane hunt to maintain a Faroese sense of 'social history' — if we all used that excuse to continue 'traditions', then cannibalism, bear baiting, cock fighting and many other historical barbaric pursuits would never have been consigned to the pages of history over previous centuries. If the Faroese also think they need to maintain the killing of hundreds of pilot whales each year to maintain 'community cohesion', then the Faroe Islands government needs to take a long, hard look at what is going wrong in their communities.

The article also states that the slaughter is not commercial — which is not entirely true. Yes, it is true that much of the pilot whale meat and blubber is divided up amongst those who take part in the hunt and then distributed to the local community. However, pilot whale meat and blubber is also sold in some Faroese stores, in the market at Tórshavn harbour, and tourists can purchase and eat pilot whale at establishments such as the Hotel Hafnia in Tórshavn, the Marco Polo restaurant, KOKS restaurant and many more — including occasionally at the Sjoemansheim hotel in Klaksvík itself.

Jo Caird states in the DIVER article: "Long-finned pilot whales are not endangered and the harvest, averaging out at 850 per year, is 'sustainable', according to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals."

This statement is entirely false — as Jo Caird would have discovered if she had fact-checked this with ASCOBANS or the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) convention secretariat staff (same offices). Faroese whale hunts are NOT designated 'sustainable' under ASCOBANS, due both to a lack of accurate pilot whale population data and to the ocean areas covered by the treaty in regard to Appendix II species. The grindadráp has not been declared sustainable by the CMS for the same reasons — as confirmed again on 28th January 2016 by the ASCOBANS coordinator and CMS Marine Mammals Officer based in Bonn, Germany, who speaks perfect English and is just a phone call away.

Jo Caird repeats the Faroese claim that the pilot whales "are killed quickly once they have been driven up onto the beach." The truth is the kill is rarely as quick as Faroese propaganda makes out. Pilot whales are large animals, and often have to be dragged ashore with a blásturongul (a type of blunt gaff hook placed in the whale's blowhole). Even with the modern technique of severing the whale's spinal cord with a mønustingari (a modified knife used in attempts to sever the spinal cord) before a grindaknívur (traditional grind hunt knife) is used to cut the whale's neck, it is difficult to get a clean, quick kill — as so many videos of such hunts demonstrate.

The killing can turn into long, drawn-out, disorganised massacres. Klaksvík was the site of the infamous grindadráp on 19th July 2010 — a hunt that went horribly wrong even by Faroese standards. During that grind, a total of 228 pilot whales were driven onto a beach only large enough for 100 whales, and there were far too few men waiting to kill them. The pilot whales were left thrashing around on the beach, on rocks and everywhere in the bay. The killing took far too long, with immense suffering for the whales. It is no wonder, then, that local councillors in Wick (Caithness, Scotland) are, as I write this, attempting to cancel the twinning relationship between their whale-friendly Scottish town and Klaksvík.

Before eventually going back onto the subject of diving in the Faroe Islands, Jo Caird writes: "If the whales were endangered, or if the hunt took place for sport rather than sustenance, that would be another matter — but with the situation as it stands, I'm not going to condemn a practice that brings communities together and dates back 1000 years."

I would hope that Jo Caird, and anyone reading this, watches some of the gruesome videos of grindadráp hunts on YouTube or Vimeo, or the images available on the web for all to view via search engines, and decides whether these hunts look like a quaint subsistence hunt — or a sport for the young men of the Faroe Islands. Our volunteers have unfortunately witnessed the 'sport' side of the grindadráp. When a grind is called, there is a buzz of excitement, lots of people rushing to the killing bay, cheering and laughter, and lots of hand-shaking and congratulations. There is no denying that this is a sport with a festival-like atmosphere, particularly for the younger Faroese men, often seen smiling and posing for photographs while drenched in the blood of the whales they have killed.

The DIVER article shares a similarity with many pro-grindadráp articles, in that it ignores the Faroese drive hunts of other small cetaceans. The Faroese kill four other Appendix II species: Atlantic white-sided dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, Risso's dolphins, and Northern bottlenose whales. The statistics are grim, especially for such a small archipelago with a population of only around 48,000. Since the year 2000, the Faroese have hunted 9,938 pilot whales, 3,652 Atlantic white-sided dolphins, 45 bottlenose dolphins, 24 Risso's dolphins, and 29 bottlenose whales.

In 2013 — the last year without a Sea Shepherd campaign presence in the Faroe Islands — the Faroe Islanders killed 1,104 pilot whales, as well as every member of a pod of 430 Atlantic white-sided dolphins on 13th August, in a single bay at Hvalba on the southern island of Suðuroy. Sea Shepherd's Operation GrindStop reduced the kills to 48 pilot whales in 2014, and the following year Operation Sleppið Grindini reduced the kills to 492 pilot whales — even in the face of new Faroese laws protecting the hunts from activists and the interventions of the Danish Navy, including the seizure of four Sea Shepherd rigid inflatable boats.

As the Danish food critic Trine Lai rightly points out on her food blog about KOKS restaurant on the Faroe Islands: "The pilot whale is in fact not considered human food anymore because it is full of mercury and other heavy metals from the pollution of the Atlantic Ocean, and it is recommended not to eat it more than once or twice a month." In fact, the Faroese chief medical officers Pál Weihe and Høgni Debes Joensen announced in November 2008 that pilot whale meat and blubber contains too much mercury, PCBs and DDT derivatives to be safe for human consumption. That leaves the grindadráp as a relic of a bygone age — a needless hunt of hundreds of pilot whales and dolphins each year, which knowingly poisons the Faroese people, is sanctioned by the Faroese government, defended by the Kingdom of Denmark, and is maintained under a ludicrous argument of 'history' and 'culture'.

I am grateful to the Editor of DIVER for the invitation to reply to this article. Surely Jo Caird, as a professional travel journalist, should know to check her facts and not rely on local and likely biased sources of information. Of course the Faroese are going to defend the grindadráp and put a positive spin on it. In my view, there can be no justification for such an atrocity against marine wildlife, and hopefully those conservation-minded divers reading the article will agree.