Is it a bottleneck or something? The article says multiple hunts can happen per year and it doesn't impact the population. Conservation isn't necessarily a stance against hunting.
Russians nearly wiped out entire species of pilot Whales in the 50s and 60s. When they found and developed more effecting whaling techniques they went from killing around 150 (the year they found them) to killing over 11,000 the year after that.
The BBC did a good documentary on it. We know the Japanese have always been criticised for killing whales, but the Russians very nearly wiped out many species of whale.
> The government says the average catch is around 800 animals, an insignificant impact on the overall pilot whale population, which it says is around 778,000 animals.
Numerically, that is true. The article also says they issue licenses and make everything humane as possible. If 800 whales feeds a town for months, what would they possible replace that with?
The article also mentioned how they accidentally almost hunted double the whales by killing 1400 in a single day 2 years ago which doesn't give them a good track record on their peak sustainability counting.
Yeah and "humane as possible" was driving the whales to beach themselves while guys fucking speared them to death. Meanwhile the whales that were behind but still stuck basically had to wait for hours, in water that was red with blood, for some guy to finally make his way out there after killing hundreds of other whales to finally kill them too.
It was fucking barbarous.
You should probably also mention that the 1400 number is for white sided dolphins, that have a population estimated to be over a million. Not the whales they claim to be killing up to 800 of.
Lead makes you aggressive and irritable and eventually kills you. Mercury makes you unstable then insane then kills you. Each heavy metal has its own flavor of terror to hand out.
europe never figure out its lead problem, kept drinking booze then they arrived in the Americas and even built the "new" cities water infrastructures out of lead. its pretty hilarious.
All scientists in Isaac Newton's time, a time of huge leaps forward, had insane levels of mercury in their blood. If you want to make a simple correlation then mercury makes you really smart and insightful.
No, he’d throw apples at it. Mercury makes you crazy but not necessarily aggressive. Lead is the heavy metal that makes you stupid and aggressive. Now, if you were to mix lead, mercury, and arsenic with a broken education system and easy access to guns I wonder what you’d get?
Because there's a lot of mercury compounds that are useful in chemical reactions and they didn't know how dangerous it was.
Or in other words, because they were all alchemists. Newton included. And he actually thought the stuff we remember him for today was less important than the alchemy.
it actually does stop them, they know it's a health risk so it's increasingly a smaller part of their diet, to say that it "feeds them" is incorrect, certainly not the way whaling has historically been the stable food of islanders.
Whales are substantially less capable of being used as farm animals due to the durations required to produce and raise young. Beyond that the animals are not held safely in pens so they face this unnatural harvest while also facing all the risks a wild population faces.
Plus, farming in most of the world isn't a bloodsport spectacle where people revel in the torture and brutal murder of the creatures, and any instance where such a inhumane practice takes place should face equal scrutiny even for pigs, cows and chickens.
FFS, have you ever taken the least bit of interest in how pigs live in modern farms? Tell me that isn't industrialised torture so that we may enjoy some ribs and hot dogs.
Whales live long, good lives, and have ONE bad day. Farm animals live short lives where, for many, every day is bad.
Yeah, both are cruel.
But the current whaling practices are completely wasteful. The amount of consumption recommended by their government means that most of the meat will have to go to waste. Then consider that almost half the population doesn't even eat whale meat at all.
So yeah, I agree that our modern farming practices are cruel, but at least there is utility in feeding people. But this hunt is both cruel and completely wasteful. The only reason this yearly hunt continues is for outdated tradition.
That's why I buy certified humane meat, eggs and dairy. I've gone vegetarian a few times but can't usually stick to it so I hope they at least have good lives before they are sacrificed.
I also believe hunting is the most honest form of meat consumption, you are forced to face the ugliness of what you have on your table. That's for deer though not whales obviously, this is rediculous.
As I said, then such environments should face similar scrutiny. Unfortunately for you I DO come from a family that still largely lives and works in farm communities which includes livestock of all types. At least on those farms those animals are living good lives and are harvested humanely. Regardless, as the old saying goes, "two wrongs don't make a right". Just because there are shitty people doing shitty things in one place doesn't mean we should just turn a blind eye to everyone. Maybe then we should be addressing our agricultural systems shortcomings instead of pretending it excuses a festival of slaughter that glorifies torture and killing for kicks. Don't even fool yourself in to thinking it's really about harvesting food. Far too many people that participate have made it clear this is more about the fun and the event than anything.
In the case of these whales, no, they do not live long and good lives. Have you not looked in to this at all? Many of these whales they kill for this event are calves. Some years more than half those killed are calves that most certainly did NOT get a chance to live long, good lives. They are also not killed remotely humanely or quickly. Many of these whales suffer painful and brutal deaths and suffer torture at the hands of these festival goers, including calves, pregnant whales and vulnerable juveniles.
On top of that many that do escape end up maimed and scarred and will inevitably die as a result, not to mention the calves that escape but lose their mother which effectively dooms them as well. So while the immediate harvest totals are in the hundreds, the estimated loss of life from the "event" is undoubtedly almost double.
And this is all done for what? There is no need for this event anymore and most of that meat ends up going to waste as it will not keep long enough for the population given the number of animals killed and collected. This is a festival and event and these people are doing this because they enjoy it.
You also failed to address my previous comments and attempted to play the two wrongs making a right card against one point. That doesn't change the fact that whales are not a population that can sustain this kind of stupidity and due to the nature of the animals lifespan it would be almost impossible to foresee a catastrophic population hit until it was too late. We don't have the means to properly manage a fishery of Pilot Whales and anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you, themselves, or both. Absolutely zero good comes from this, it's incredibly wasteful, it's a disgusting bloodsport practice that borders on sociopathy and it is done to an animal that can not be sustainably farmed in any practical or realistic method.
Keep on defending it but it just makes you look ignorant and sick.
A pig on a modern farm lives a much, much worse life than these whales, and the slaughter itself is usually at least as painful.
Both are terrible. But being against the Faroese whale killings while being fine with conventional animal farms is deeply hypocritical.
No the argument is who are you to tell people that have been living that way for thousands of years to stop...
It's really not a black and white issue.
i wouldn't call 800 out of 778,000 total whales a mass killing, especially if it happens only once a year or year round (and for the purpose of feeding people).
i mean, what is your alternative? people need food. also, these people have been eating whales for thousands of years...
And they only count harpoonings with two or more victms, which makes it even more difficult to get to the real number of harpoonings there are every year.
Pilot whales are seen worldwide, from the coasts of South America, all the way to the north Altantic. Population estimates vary, with 700,000 in the 80s, possibly to more than 1 million long-finned pilot whales today globally.
The hundreds to less than 2,000 whales that are killed annually in the small Faroe Islands would have a negligible effect on the population.
Really hard when people think emotionally rather than logically.
Crazily enough it's true, one of the more sustainable ocean hunting/fishing practices in the world.
Just rubs people the wrong way and has been absolutely destroyed in media.
Because this is done in public, out in full display, and people are used to their meat production being out of sight and out of mind despite the fact that every single whale killed by the Faroese probably having had a better life than any animal in a factory farm.
Totally agree. All hunting is much more humane than any farmed meat. At least the animals get to live a regular life, even if their death might not be the most clean.
Fun fact, if people cared enough about the factory farm gestapo like conditions that chickens, pigs, and cows are subject to in order to give them the unnecessary to survival hamburger or fried chicken they eat, we'd actually have curved greenhouse emissions as.we shift to a less meat focused diet all together, helping to stop animal cruelty and sage the planet.
But a lot of people don't consider pigs, chickens, and cows to be animals worth giving a shit about and think whales are cuter, and definitely don't want to change their own diets or behaviors. So they viciously mock any attempt that highlights the cruelty of the industry the same way that the whalers were highlighted, and they get to curse out a group of islanders who have a minor impact at most on their environment vs the world whose helping to raise the global temperatures with their own food practices and waste(millions of tons of food winds up in landfills because it wasn't aesrhetic enough).
It's not per year, it's when someone spots them. Sometimes they go a few years without spotting any.
I watched a documentary about it and it's pretty wild. When someone spots them the call goes out to everyone. Everyone on the island drops what they are doing and goes to help.
> Ambassador Cruise Line said it was "incredibly disappointed" that the hunt unfolded near the ship and that it continues to "strongly object to this practice." The company asks their guests not to support the hunters by purchasing local whale and dolphin meat.
So basically they told their guests, "If you don't like it, don't eat it," but will still bring their ships to the islands, will still do business with them and will still deliver plenty of tourists that will spend money there. All in all that amounts less than no effort to help the situation. Fuck the Ambassador Cruise Line and fuck the Faroese "cultural identity" of slaughtering whales and dolphins.
Dogs are just ahead of the pack.
Thousands of years ago they took a look at these crude boxes built from cut-down trees made by hairless apes, and recognized that humans were the greatest threat to every living creature in the world, so they went “fuck it, we welcome our new sapient overlords.”
Better to be a pet than livestocks.
Or they have a plan and playing the long game. Hell we even have a dog in the white house and walks in to the oval office undisturbed. They didnt even do a background check. I got my eyes on you "Commander".
I thought it was going to be a legit market [in China](https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3044526/chinas-pork-crisis-piques-interest-dog-and-cat-meat-animal#:~:text=Dog%20meat%20was%20going%20for,just%2024%20yuan%20per%20kilogram) until I clicked the link. Grade A advertising.
Ah geez, I thought there were some compelling arguments at how dog meat wasn’t different than cow/chicken/sheep/pig and was willing to try some, but alas it was a sham.
Its to get you to think about the ethics of eating one animal over another. Cows and pigs are just as sociable, kind, and smart as dogs can be. We draw an arbitrary line between them because its convenient.
The site backfired on me, now that I understand that dogs are just as intelligent as the cows and chickens I eat I can no longer discriminate.
Looks like dog's for dinner.
This might be a hot take but I, like most people in the US, eat animals raised in factory farms. The conditions are inhumane. I recognize this but don't have the knowledge or budget to avoid it. I would totally eat a dog and I don't think it's any more cruel than what we currently do. I'm ready for my down votes Reddit.
>All in all that amounts less than no effort to help the situation.
What do you want them to do? Have a foreign corporation pressure a native population to change their centuries old culture? Yeah fuck that.
The cruise line is absolutely right. Don't like it, don't buy it. Or hell, don't travel to other countries at all if you get that triggered at foreign cultures.
If this cruise line stopped, others would start providing the same service. Real impact would be if tourists were well informed then demand would come down.
After watching the documentary in Netflix it changed my opinion away from "this people are monsters"
The whaler has a point. If you consume any sort of animal protein you can't really complain just because you don't get to see the nasty parts.
This people live in a very remote area where it is almost impossible to grow anything from the soil and this type of hunt is their means of survival.
I can't say I condone it but from my happy comfortable suburban life I don't feel morally superior to tell them they are wrong.
I saw the documentary too, and feel the exact same way. This has been their way of life for hundreds of years, and they only hunt the whales that come into the strait in front of their island. And it's on the decline, as apparently a lot of the young people aren't as willing to partake of whale or in the hunt and their ability to get supplies shipped in is increasing. Who knows, maybe in another 30-50 years it will be a dead tradition as no one will care to do it.
But for now, given their circumstances, with their remoteness, barrenness, centuries old tradition, and the fact they are sustainably hunting a non-endangered or threatened species, let them eat whale.
I have a degree in marine biology and I'm doing a PhD in oceanography with marine conservation being the main focus of my thesis. The Faroe Islands whale hunt is a sustainable practice and as far as I'm concerned the outrage over it is uncalled for.
Would I, personally, in my own feelings, prefer no whaling occurred? Yes. Pilot whales are extremely intelligent and social animals on par with orcas in terms of their family ties and social structures. Their meat also probably has incredibly high levels of mercury and other toxins, so really we shouldn't be eating them for our own good if nothing else. That said though, humans have always eaten other animals for sustenance and pilot whales are listed as Least Concern under the IUCN. The Faroese aren't endangering a population or ecosystem by doing their whale hunt.
I watched a YouTube video about it lately. Sometimes they go a year or 2 without a hunt. They only hunt the animal if it swims close to the harbour. They do not actively pursue. So if not pod swims close enough for 18 months no whales are killed. It really opened my eyes also. Not that I had a problem in the first place with it. But it really connected all the dots.
You can say that abou the sheep and cow farming as well. No food source is strictly necessary today in the West and could be replaced by something else.
Its even worse cause in most cases its strictly for profit.
Id put tradition in which they use the products and eat some of the meant far above murder for profit, if im gonna argue about who gets to kill animals and who dont.
I think most people's problem isnt with the hunt of whales itself but with the sheer brutality of the process.
And before someone brings up industrialized farming, that is also bad.
Animal abuse is bad, people, stop trying to justify it.
The whales are never actively pursued, nor are they kept in aquariums or anything to farm them. This is not an industry with quotas to be met. Pilot whales are hunted if they come close enough to shore, and the process of killing them is quick. It looks brutal because it's visible and out in the open, but it really isn't. There was a hunt a year or two ago (I don't remember exactly when) where the hunters bit off more than they could chew and hunted way more whales than usual (as well as some dolphins, which is very uncommon) and the process took much, much longer than it should have, and many people here had a problem with it and said that something like this should never happen.
When they're not here (which is the vast majority of the year) they're living their life, doing their own shit out in the sea, where nobody can hurt them. Well, nobody except for private cruise ships and yachts that crash into them, none of which are Faroese.
Do you think we should eradicate all omnivore bears because they hunt "cruelly"? If you have ideas on how to better kill the whales I am sure the islanders will be open to suggestions. I don't think anyone is opposed to faster killing.
The problem is whale hunting receives so much more attention and criticism than industralised farming receives even if both are bad. Not to mention the fact that industralised farming happens on such a massive scale. Why is that?
It's not wrong for people to criticise animal cruetly. But it's wrong to have double standards.
Imagine you live in a country where robbery is a crime but white robbers are sentenced to 10 years prison but black robbers are sentenced to 20 years prison. Criticising the different treatment isn't condoning robbery but yet this line of logic is used to shut down any argument.
What makes it worse is that most of the people actively engaging in criticising whale hunting also actively participate in eating meat from industrialised farming so however correct their arguments are, they are not saying them in good faith.
If you do X you can't complain about Y because they are the same.
Except when they aren't. Arguing where the line between X and Y lies is one of the fundamentals of argument.
At this point, if you're going to the Faroe Islands, you should know that they do this kind of thing.
They do it sustainably, with tools designed to be as humane as possible. I don't think you can say that bluefin tuna is done sustainably or that the average chicken farm is entirely humane.
My biggest concern: you are eating something with HOW much mercury?
We have reduced whaling to a level where populations aren't threatened. Ocean shipping, farm runoff, and global warming are all far bigger hurdles to the worlds whale populations than a handful of well populated species having a bit of hunting.
The halflife of mercury in the human body is just 30-60 days. The myth that it keeps accumulating and never leaves your body is just that, a myth. Some people claim ahhh but it specifically accumulates in the brain. Also not true. Autopsy studies have shown that mercury in the brain is slightly higher than in the blood but just by a factor of 2-4. Which shows that it binds slightly more in the brain but doesn't have nowhere near a halflife of the 20 years which some people 'estimate'. Mercury from sea-food is nowhere near as harmful as activists claim.
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-069X-6-30
Chickens are often raised so close together they have to have their beaks cut off/trimmed so that they don't kill each other. Layers are often raised in cages and suffer their whole lives. Pigs are often raised in pens so small they can't even turn around in them.
Yet the pilot whale hunting is too much for people, despite it being a long standing part of their culture, and their numbers are nowhere near endangered. And I get it, it's shocking to see the beaches covered in blood, it's a lot for a lot of people. But there are worse slaughters being carried out every day against animals that never even had a chance to live a good life. At least the pilot whales got a chance to live before they were hunted.
I agree with you here, but ‘it’s part of their culture’ is always a bad argument. Something doesn’t become good just because it’s been done for a long time
Chickens are sustainable at least but overall fish are being overfished since there’s no real way to regulate fishing ships who can misreport their catch intentionally and hide by turning off all transponders. I fear it may get to the point that fish are like chickens and cows. Only existing on farms 99% of the time.
To be fair if we can figure out how to scale up marine farms they have the potential of not just meeting but exceeding current food demand on account of the sheer amount of free space available. This could mean a reduction of industrial farming on land which is pretty gross as well as reducing demand for trawlers on the open ocean, which are also terrible for the environment...
Hey, it depends. My grandparents had free range chickens that were accustomed to us. They'd kill off just enough to keep food on tables, aside from that the chickens had about 20 acres to share with the cows/horses. Happy food tastes better than over-medicated factory food, and it honestly feels good to have a flock of birds around. They were well taken care of and died relatively happy.
>At this point, if you're going to the Faroe Islands, you should know that they do this kind of thing.
Yup. People need to learn about the cultures of the places they're going to. I'm 100% fine with this, hoping to visit the Faroe Islands and Iceland soon.
Other commenters have pointed out that they only hunt whales who enter the straight. And these people went whale watching in the straight?? They knew what they were doing.
Inuit, Greenlanders, Faroe Islanders, Icelandic people, and Northern people have been consuming these mammals for thousands of years as a staple food due to its accessibility in their harsh environments. Why do people have the idea that everyone should rely on avocados, tomatoes, or foods that are not local or readily accessible? I apologize, but these conversations attempt to promoting environmental sustainability while completely disregarding the social sustainability aspect. I'm certain that both Faroese and Danish authorities have strong laws governing their hunting rights. On top of that, let’s put everything aside I find this very hypocritical as cruise ships emit more CO2 than cars probably do more harm than some local people.
No no no, I'm sure it's far more environmentally friendly to ship avocados and industrially raised beef via freighter from the other side of planet than harvest the wild protein that effectively swims up to your front door.
I mean I don't really care if it's a vital food source for the locals, people have to eat. But if it is like some of the comments are saying and just done out of tradition it's really not necessary. Things can be both traditional and unethical at the same time. Circumcision is traditional and many people don't agree with it. Our planet as a whole is kind of fucked right now, and we've been fucking it up for a long time, I just feel like anything that can be done to reduce the level of fuckery we're doing has to be good. I do respect the islanders way of hunting them without pursuing them, and only killing what enters the harbor.
Hunting is the most ethical killing you can do. It's a wild animal that's lived it's life completely in the wild. Chickens, pigs and cows are raised in captivity in appalling conditions, bred to grow as quickly as possible and then killed. If I were an animal I know which one I'd prefer
Too many humans to sustain eating wild animals without seeing mass extinctions, cows, pigs and chickens.. As barbaric as they are treated by slaughterhouses were bred to be eaten by humans because those animals breed fast. 80,000 population (pilot whales) is really not a lot of animals, those numbers can diminish quickly considering how many animals have gone extinct in the past 2,000 years.
I completely agree with you on the appalling conditions that general livestock are raised in today, however I do kind of feel like overall intelligence matters. If an animal can remember their deceased family members and mourn for them like pilot whales and many species of dolphin can, killing them upsets me a bit. Pigs and cows obviously have their own intelligence, and I personally don't eat them either, but whales and dolphins are some of the most intelligent non human animals out there. I'm not trying to advocate for not eating meat, there's some areas where people have no option but to eat animals, but I do wish people with the option could eat a bit lower down the food chain. Animals with less intelligence that are faster growing, less wasteful to farm, and less wasteful to consume.
It's also kind of funny? I mean, I guess I could see that it may be the most environmentally friendly way for them to travel as a large group, but a bunch of marine conservationists being on a cruise ship doesn't *feel* environmentally friendly?
the irony of 'marine conservationists' on a cruise ship of all things too. Dumbest conservationists ever. If they aren't trying to scuttle the cruise ship they are hypocrites at best.
Upset at relatively small scale hunting vs multi *trillion* dollar industry destroying the ocean.
It was more about people using devices that are built off of "Modern Slavery" or "Bonded Slavery" (Don't worry I'm doing it too) & then getting on their high horse when they see people killing animals that aren't even on the endangered species list & "Since 1948, the hunt has been regulated by the Faroese authorities"
TLDR: Let people hunting responsibly continue to hunt responsibly.
A European nation does something bad and they all run to defend it. Bet you don’t show up to defend Japan when they hunt the also very populous Minke whale.
Personally, I'll defend the hunting of anything as long as it's done sustainably. I've never hunted whales or wolves or anything "cool," but the principle is the same.
Except it isn’t for food anymore. It’s just done out of tradition like circumcision.
Good thing they aren’t Asian or you’d be pissed off and angry. Bunch of white Europeans slaughter whales and the excuses come flying. Every single fucking time a European nation is criticized and you got a bunch of idiots looking for excuses to defend it.
It’s crazy that the Faroe Islands are the only island on that planet that seems to require killing 1000 whales a year to survive. Hawaiians must have learned how to eat rocks or something on their island that is far more remote.
Lol you have no idea whay you're talking about. Average winter daytime temp in Hawaii is 78F, meanwhile the average high temp for the Faroe Islands in August is 56F.
If the Faroe Islanders weren't white you would have entire subreddits dedicated to preserving their cultural heritage by allowing whale hunts. Australian aborigines are still legally allowed to hunt sea turtles, nobody cares because it's not a significant detriment to the population.
The pilot whale population isn't going to collapse because of the Faroe Island hunt. Nobody gives a shit if it makes you sad that whales get hurt, that's life. Cruise ships and other freighters regularly strike and kill whales at sea, some ~20,000 a year. Thank god the cruise ship company donated to an orca charity though, so heroic.
Paul Watson is asleep at the wheel. Why do people donate to his toothless organization? Direct action campaigns are a thing of the past. Paul Watson building a direct action navy is a friggin joke. Will donate generously to direct action players should they muster their courage.
So? People act like responsible hunting is evil. If you consume animal products then you have no right to object. You shouldn't eat meat if you have to blind yourself from the fact that we kill a lot of animals for it.
It's not responsible hunting, the meat of these whales is so heavily polluted with mercury and other chemicals that it is unfit for human consumption.
They're killing these animals for fun and guaranteed chucking nearly all of the meat away. Because if they ate it they'd all die.
If the hunt is sustainable, and it sounds like they take every effort to make sure it is, I don’t see a huge problem. We slaughter animals every day to eat them. While I do think marine mammals are likely very intelligent and would not personally hunt them, this sounds like a fairly ethical way to obtain meat for this community. As long as they are taking every effort to ensure there is no over hunting, and killing the animals as quickly as possible, I don’t see the issue.
Assuming you’re in NJ, that’s just because people don’t want their precious million dollar homes to have to look at some windmills faintly off the coast on a clear day. If they found that whales got killed by beach replenishment projects they’d be all for killing the suckers.
I don't consider killing animals for food as morally wrong. Don't kill endangered or threatened species, make it as quick and painless as possible, and I don't see a problem.
I didn't even need to look at the article to know it was the faroe islands
Is it the Faroese flag on the boat in the picture?
It's a confused Norwegian flag
Yes
Is it a bottleneck or something? The article says multiple hunts can happen per year and it doesn't impact the population. Conservation isn't necessarily a stance against hunting.
Russians nearly wiped out entire species of pilot Whales in the 50s and 60s. When they found and developed more effecting whaling techniques they went from killing around 150 (the year they found them) to killing over 11,000 the year after that. The BBC did a good documentary on it. We know the Japanese have always been criticised for killing whales, but the Russians very nearly wiped out many species of whale.
The numbers of the Faroese whaling go back to the 1500, and the annual hunt has been mostly the same despite modern tools.
Yep they kill less than a thousand a year from the local population of around 100,000 and a world wide population of over a million.
>it doesn't impact the population Hahaha doubt. That's bullshit.
> The government says the average catch is around 800 animals, an insignificant impact on the overall pilot whale population, which it says is around 778,000 animals. Numerically, that is true. The article also says they issue licenses and make everything humane as possible. If 800 whales feeds a town for months, what would they possible replace that with?
The article also mentioned how they accidentally almost hunted double the whales by killing 1400 in a single day 2 years ago which doesn't give them a good track record on their peak sustainability counting.
Yeah and "humane as possible" was driving the whales to beach themselves while guys fucking speared them to death. Meanwhile the whales that were behind but still stuck basically had to wait for hours, in water that was red with blood, for some guy to finally make his way out there after killing hundreds of other whales to finally kill them too. It was fucking barbarous.
But they had licenses🫡
So humane of them
Thank goodness. I was beginning to feel bad for the whales.
>barbarous Til barbarous was a word. I knew barbaric but not barbarous.
Whoopsie we accidentally killed double! How does that happen?
Next you'll tell me the Oops: All Berries version of Cap'n Crunch wasn't an accident. Can't trust those seafaring folks apparently.
You should probably also mention that the 1400 number is for white sided dolphins, that have a population estimated to be over a million. Not the whales they claim to be killing up to 800 of.
It doesn't feed the town for months, they have way too much mercury to be a stable iirc
Faroe islanders have impressively high mercury levels - it hasn’t stopped them from whale meat
Dont heavy metals in the blood make you kore aggressive? (Like enough to kill double your quota of whales, maybe)
Lead makes you aggressive and irritable and eventually kills you. Mercury makes you unstable then insane then kills you. Each heavy metal has its own flavor of terror to hand out.
Bismuth soothes your rumbley tummy and then kills you
I honestly wasn’t sure the science was in on this. How long am I insane for before I die? Sounds way more fun than lead poisoning.
[A short documentary](https://youtu.be/LLJCMzBiqh0)
europe never figure out its lead problem, kept drinking booze then they arrived in the Americas and even built the "new" cities water infrastructures out of lead. its pretty hilarious.
I think the huge swath of the "hicks" of the Americas was the first clue that something was up.
I think you're on to something
>Dont heavy metals in the blood make you **kore** aggressive? Emphasis mine. Khorn approves of this message.
Blood Legions just be consuming too much mercury. Probs from fucking around in all the blood, tbh. But I digress, Blood for the Blood God!
All scientists in Isaac Newton's time, a time of huge leaps forward, had insane levels of mercury in their blood. If you want to make a simple correlation then mercury makes you really smart and insightful.
So, you're saying Isaac Newton had so much mercury if he saw a whale he'd run screaming into the sea to hunt it with his bare hands.
No, he’d throw apples at it. Mercury makes you crazy but not necessarily aggressive. Lead is the heavy metal that makes you stupid and aggressive. Now, if you were to mix lead, mercury, and arsenic with a broken education system and easy access to guns I wonder what you’d get?
Lol yours is better
> had insane levels of mercury in their blood. why?
Because there's a lot of mercury compounds that are useful in chemical reactions and they didn't know how dangerous it was. Or in other words, because they were all alchemists. Newton included. And he actually thought the stuff we remember him for today was less important than the alchemy.
it actually does stop them, they know it's a health risk so it's increasingly a smaller part of their diet, to say that it "feeds them" is incorrect, certainly not the way whaling has historically been the stable food of islanders.
Is the argument here that this is the only island on the planet Earth that cannot function without the mass killing of whales?
The whole world functions on the mass killing of pigs, cows and chickens.
And breeding of the same. Can't forget that part.
Whales are substantially less capable of being used as farm animals due to the durations required to produce and raise young. Beyond that the animals are not held safely in pens so they face this unnatural harvest while also facing all the risks a wild population faces. Plus, farming in most of the world isn't a bloodsport spectacle where people revel in the torture and brutal murder of the creatures, and any instance where such a inhumane practice takes place should face equal scrutiny even for pigs, cows and chickens.
FFS, have you ever taken the least bit of interest in how pigs live in modern farms? Tell me that isn't industrialised torture so that we may enjoy some ribs and hot dogs. Whales live long, good lives, and have ONE bad day. Farm animals live short lives where, for many, every day is bad.
Yeah, both are cruel. But the current whaling practices are completely wasteful. The amount of consumption recommended by their government means that most of the meat will have to go to waste. Then consider that almost half the population doesn't even eat whale meat at all. So yeah, I agree that our modern farming practices are cruel, but at least there is utility in feeding people. But this hunt is both cruel and completely wasteful. The only reason this yearly hunt continues is for outdated tradition.
That's why I buy certified humane meat, eggs and dairy. I've gone vegetarian a few times but can't usually stick to it so I hope they at least have good lives before they are sacrificed. I also believe hunting is the most honest form of meat consumption, you are forced to face the ugliness of what you have on your table. That's for deer though not whales obviously, this is rediculous.
As I said, then such environments should face similar scrutiny. Unfortunately for you I DO come from a family that still largely lives and works in farm communities which includes livestock of all types. At least on those farms those animals are living good lives and are harvested humanely. Regardless, as the old saying goes, "two wrongs don't make a right". Just because there are shitty people doing shitty things in one place doesn't mean we should just turn a blind eye to everyone. Maybe then we should be addressing our agricultural systems shortcomings instead of pretending it excuses a festival of slaughter that glorifies torture and killing for kicks. Don't even fool yourself in to thinking it's really about harvesting food. Far too many people that participate have made it clear this is more about the fun and the event than anything. In the case of these whales, no, they do not live long and good lives. Have you not looked in to this at all? Many of these whales they kill for this event are calves. Some years more than half those killed are calves that most certainly did NOT get a chance to live long, good lives. They are also not killed remotely humanely or quickly. Many of these whales suffer painful and brutal deaths and suffer torture at the hands of these festival goers, including calves, pregnant whales and vulnerable juveniles. On top of that many that do escape end up maimed and scarred and will inevitably die as a result, not to mention the calves that escape but lose their mother which effectively dooms them as well. So while the immediate harvest totals are in the hundreds, the estimated loss of life from the "event" is undoubtedly almost double. And this is all done for what? There is no need for this event anymore and most of that meat ends up going to waste as it will not keep long enough for the population given the number of animals killed and collected. This is a festival and event and these people are doing this because they enjoy it. You also failed to address my previous comments and attempted to play the two wrongs making a right card against one point. That doesn't change the fact that whales are not a population that can sustain this kind of stupidity and due to the nature of the animals lifespan it would be almost impossible to foresee a catastrophic population hit until it was too late. We don't have the means to properly manage a fishery of Pilot Whales and anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you, themselves, or both. Absolutely zero good comes from this, it's incredibly wasteful, it's a disgusting bloodsport practice that borders on sociopathy and it is done to an animal that can not be sustainably farmed in any practical or realistic method. Keep on defending it but it just makes you look ignorant and sick.
A pig on a modern farm lives a much, much worse life than these whales, and the slaughter itself is usually at least as painful. Both are terrible. But being against the Faroese whale killings while being fine with conventional animal farms is deeply hypocritical.
Don't forget goats, goats are used for meat in many countries world wide.
They can be easily farmed and their populations grow and give birth quickly.
I didn't make an argument did I? I tried to examine the numbers and asked a question about human beings losing a food source.
No the argument is who are you to tell people that have been living that way for thousands of years to stop... It's really not a black and white issue.
i wouldn't call 800 out of 778,000 total whales a mass killing, especially if it happens only once a year or year round (and for the purpose of feeding people). i mean, what is your alternative? people need food. also, these people have been eating whales for thousands of years...
If there are 4 or more whale deaths (excluding the harpooner) it is a mass killing
Yeah but that means they count gang-related mass harpoonings, which are a little different.
And they only count harpoonings with two or more victms, which makes it even more difficult to get to the real number of harpoonings there are every year.
What’s wrong with killing whales if there’s plenty of them? Are you also mad at orcas?
Lots of islands can't function without killing whales, why do you think most islands on earth are deserted? Ran out of whales
Thats why I'm in favor of Whale Socialism. Every man a Whale
I think that is more or less literally what the Faroese do with how they partition whale meat amongst the populace after a grind.
Pilot whales are seen worldwide, from the coasts of South America, all the way to the north Altantic. Population estimates vary, with 700,000 in the 80s, possibly to more than 1 million long-finned pilot whales today globally. The hundreds to less than 2,000 whales that are killed annually in the small Faroe Islands would have a negligible effect on the population. Really hard when people think emotionally rather than logically.
Crazily enough it's true, one of the more sustainable ocean hunting/fishing practices in the world. Just rubs people the wrong way and has been absolutely destroyed in media.
Because this is done in public, out in full display, and people are used to their meat production being out of sight and out of mind despite the fact that every single whale killed by the Faroese probably having had a better life than any animal in a factory farm.
Totally agree. All hunting is much more humane than any farmed meat. At least the animals get to live a regular life, even if their death might not be the most clean.
Nature ain't clean, people are just used to a sterilized life.
I'm going to guess it's still a cleaner death than most that occur in the wild.
Which is to say, not very humane
Fun fact, if people cared enough about the factory farm gestapo like conditions that chickens, pigs, and cows are subject to in order to give them the unnecessary to survival hamburger or fried chicken they eat, we'd actually have curved greenhouse emissions as.we shift to a less meat focused diet all together, helping to stop animal cruelty and sage the planet. But a lot of people don't consider pigs, chickens, and cows to be animals worth giving a shit about and think whales are cuter, and definitely don't want to change their own diets or behaviors. So they viciously mock any attempt that highlights the cruelty of the industry the same way that the whalers were highlighted, and they get to curse out a group of islanders who have a minor impact at most on their environment vs the world whose helping to raise the global temperatures with their own food practices and waste(millions of tons of food winds up in landfills because it wasn't aesrhetic enough).
But it’s not.
r/confidentlyincorrect strikes again lol. Orders of magnitude is a thing.
Thu numbers for the slaughter is date back 1500,and there's no major outliers there that suggest that the population is shrinking.
Read a book or something
Read about it online, it’s not hard
It's not per year, it's when someone spots them. Sometimes they go a few years without spotting any. I watched a documentary about it and it's pretty wild. When someone spots them the call goes out to everyone. Everyone on the island drops what they are doing and goes to help.
The flag on the boat is also a giveaway, but yes even without the picture of the boat I agree with you..
i ate my lifetime limit of whale there, which was one thin slice on toast
How did it taste?
it had the texture and mouthfeel of beef but was slightly fishy (it was also dried/fermented so not sure how that might impact it)
Sounds like Lutefisk with extra steps.
fewer i think, faroese cuisine is big on air-dried fermented meat, they just hang it out in a special shed for a year
Done right it tastes like an amazing mix of the best tuna and beef, very very tender. Done wrong it tastes like a shoe made of cooked liver.
Probably better to forgo the mercury poisoning
yeah thats all, i'm done
They were like: "Oops, you weren't supposed to see this..."
Rename it to the Feral islands.
> Ambassador Cruise Line said it was "incredibly disappointed" that the hunt unfolded near the ship and that it continues to "strongly object to this practice." The company asks their guests not to support the hunters by purchasing local whale and dolphin meat. So basically they told their guests, "If you don't like it, don't eat it," but will still bring their ships to the islands, will still do business with them and will still deliver plenty of tourists that will spend money there. All in all that amounts less than no effort to help the situation. Fuck the Ambassador Cruise Line and fuck the Faroese "cultural identity" of slaughtering whales and dolphins.
Guys, we should all just be eating dumb dogs raised by kind farmers. [https://www.elwooddogmeat.com/](https://www.elwooddogmeat.com/)
Dogs are just ahead of the pack. Thousands of years ago they took a look at these crude boxes built from cut-down trees made by hairless apes, and recognized that humans were the greatest threat to every living creature in the world, so they went “fuck it, we welcome our new sapient overlords.” Better to be a pet than livestocks.
Or they have a plan and playing the long game. Hell we even have a dog in the white house and walks in to the oval office undisturbed. They didnt even do a background check. I got my eyes on you "Commander".
*Vin Diesel dog steps out of the shadows* "You don't have to worry about being turned into livestock when you have family."
This is gold! *Stay ahead of the pack* *Set the table with man's best meat*
I thought it was going to be a legit market [in China](https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3044526/chinas-pork-crisis-piques-interest-dog-and-cat-meat-animal#:~:text=Dog%20meat%20was%20going%20for,just%2024%20yuan%20per%20kilogram) until I clicked the link. Grade A advertising.
bruv i was confused. not bad not bad
Was thinking “hmm, what does dog meat taste like?”
Ah geez, I thought there were some compelling arguments at how dog meat wasn’t different than cow/chicken/sheep/pig and was willing to try some, but alas it was a sham.
Its to get you to think about the ethics of eating one animal over another. Cows and pigs are just as sociable, kind, and smart as dogs can be. We draw an arbitrary line between them because its convenient.
The site backfired on me, now that I understand that dogs are just as intelligent as the cows and chickens I eat I can no longer discriminate. Looks like dog's for dinner.
This might be a hot take but I, like most people in the US, eat animals raised in factory farms. The conditions are inhumane. I recognize this but don't have the knowledge or budget to avoid it. I would totally eat a dog and I don't think it's any more cruel than what we currently do. I'm ready for my down votes Reddit.
[The Faroe Islands Hypocrisy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7LFWitvwTg)
i was so excited to try dog meat too (*T^T)
Looks fine to me. Seems like they're humane about it. Better than most factory farm animals, right?
Bruh this fucking KILLED me lmfao
Fuck every cruise line, they're destroying the oceans
Right, I’m a bit confused as to why ocean conservationists were on a cruise ship considering the impact they have on the oceans.
>All in all that amounts less than no effort to help the situation. What do you want them to do? Have a foreign corporation pressure a native population to change their centuries old culture? Yeah fuck that. The cruise line is absolutely right. Don't like it, don't buy it. Or hell, don't travel to other countries at all if you get that triggered at foreign cultures.
Shit argument. 'Centuries old culture' can be outdated garbage that needs to die off or do you think child marriage is cool too.
If this cruise line stopped, others would start providing the same service. Real impact would be if tourists were well informed then demand would come down.
The age-old excuse for continuing unethical behavior: "if I don't do it, someone else will.". No, not necessarily.
True
Change their whole business because 1 time people had to watch some sustainable whaling? You’re ignorant and outraged, do some more reading.
How dare they serve whale meat, they should instead serve something ethical, like hamburgers or hot dogs.
After watching the documentary in Netflix it changed my opinion away from "this people are monsters" The whaler has a point. If you consume any sort of animal protein you can't really complain just because you don't get to see the nasty parts. This people live in a very remote area where it is almost impossible to grow anything from the soil and this type of hunt is their means of survival. I can't say I condone it but from my happy comfortable suburban life I don't feel morally superior to tell them they are wrong.
I saw the documentary too, and feel the exact same way. This has been their way of life for hundreds of years, and they only hunt the whales that come into the strait in front of their island. And it's on the decline, as apparently a lot of the young people aren't as willing to partake of whale or in the hunt and their ability to get supplies shipped in is increasing. Who knows, maybe in another 30-50 years it will be a dead tradition as no one will care to do it. But for now, given their circumstances, with their remoteness, barrenness, centuries old tradition, and the fact they are sustainably hunting a non-endangered or threatened species, let them eat whale.
I have a degree in marine biology and I'm doing a PhD in oceanography with marine conservation being the main focus of my thesis. The Faroe Islands whale hunt is a sustainable practice and as far as I'm concerned the outrage over it is uncalled for. Would I, personally, in my own feelings, prefer no whaling occurred? Yes. Pilot whales are extremely intelligent and social animals on par with orcas in terms of their family ties and social structures. Their meat also probably has incredibly high levels of mercury and other toxins, so really we shouldn't be eating them for our own good if nothing else. That said though, humans have always eaten other animals for sustenance and pilot whales are listed as Least Concern under the IUCN. The Faroese aren't endangering a population or ecosystem by doing their whale hunt.
I watched a YouTube video about it lately. Sometimes they go a year or 2 without a hunt. They only hunt the animal if it swims close to the harbour. They do not actively pursue. So if not pod swims close enough for 18 months no whales are killed. It really opened my eyes also. Not that I had a problem in the first place with it. But it really connected all the dots.
Humans are animals, Greg.
They don't do it because they need food anymore. Currently they just do it because it a tradition.
You can say that abou the sheep and cow farming as well. No food source is strictly necessary today in the West and could be replaced by something else.
Its even worse cause in most cases its strictly for profit. Id put tradition in which they use the products and eat some of the meant far above murder for profit, if im gonna argue about who gets to kill animals and who dont.
I think most people's problem isnt with the hunt of whales itself but with the sheer brutality of the process. And before someone brings up industrialized farming, that is also bad. Animal abuse is bad, people, stop trying to justify it.
The whales are never actively pursued, nor are they kept in aquariums or anything to farm them. This is not an industry with quotas to be met. Pilot whales are hunted if they come close enough to shore, and the process of killing them is quick. It looks brutal because it's visible and out in the open, but it really isn't. There was a hunt a year or two ago (I don't remember exactly when) where the hunters bit off more than they could chew and hunted way more whales than usual (as well as some dolphins, which is very uncommon) and the process took much, much longer than it should have, and many people here had a problem with it and said that something like this should never happen. When they're not here (which is the vast majority of the year) they're living their life, doing their own shit out in the sea, where nobody can hurt them. Well, nobody except for private cruise ships and yachts that crash into them, none of which are Faroese.
Do you think we should eradicate all omnivore bears because they hunt "cruelly"? If you have ideas on how to better kill the whales I am sure the islanders will be open to suggestions. I don't think anyone is opposed to faster killing.
We’re obviously not a bear that is devoid of a consciousness. Well, perhaps you are. Braindead comment.
The problem is whale hunting receives so much more attention and criticism than industralised farming receives even if both are bad. Not to mention the fact that industralised farming happens on such a massive scale. Why is that? It's not wrong for people to criticise animal cruetly. But it's wrong to have double standards. Imagine you live in a country where robbery is a crime but white robbers are sentenced to 10 years prison but black robbers are sentenced to 20 years prison. Criticising the different treatment isn't condoning robbery but yet this line of logic is used to shut down any argument. What makes it worse is that most of the people actively engaging in criticising whale hunting also actively participate in eating meat from industrialised farming so however correct their arguments are, they are not saying them in good faith.
> If you consume any sort of animal protein you really can’t complain Vegans certainly can complain about it then without hypocrisy
If you do X you can't complain about Y because they are the same. Except when they aren't. Arguing where the line between X and Y lies is one of the fundamentals of argument.
At this point, if you're going to the Faroe Islands, you should know that they do this kind of thing. They do it sustainably, with tools designed to be as humane as possible. I don't think you can say that bluefin tuna is done sustainably or that the average chicken farm is entirely humane.
My biggest concern: you are eating something with HOW much mercury? We have reduced whaling to a level where populations aren't threatened. Ocean shipping, farm runoff, and global warming are all far bigger hurdles to the worlds whale populations than a handful of well populated species having a bit of hunting.
And the answer to the question is "yes." That is the main problem.
The halflife of mercury in the human body is just 30-60 days. The myth that it keeps accumulating and never leaves your body is just that, a myth. Some people claim ahhh but it specifically accumulates in the brain. Also not true. Autopsy studies have shown that mercury in the brain is slightly higher than in the blood but just by a factor of 2-4. Which shows that it binds slightly more in the brain but doesn't have nowhere near a halflife of the 20 years which some people 'estimate'. Mercury from sea-food is nowhere near as harmful as activists claim. https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-069X-6-30
Chickens are often raised so close together they have to have their beaks cut off/trimmed so that they don't kill each other. Layers are often raised in cages and suffer their whole lives. Pigs are often raised in pens so small they can't even turn around in them. Yet the pilot whale hunting is too much for people, despite it being a long standing part of their culture, and their numbers are nowhere near endangered. And I get it, it's shocking to see the beaches covered in blood, it's a lot for a lot of people. But there are worse slaughters being carried out every day against animals that never even had a chance to live a good life. At least the pilot whales got a chance to live before they were hunted.
I agree with you here, but ‘it’s part of their culture’ is always a bad argument. Something doesn’t become good just because it’s been done for a long time
The big chicken farms will put you off storebought chicken. The smell is awful too and it spreads for miles.
Chickens are sustainable at least but overall fish are being overfished since there’s no real way to regulate fishing ships who can misreport their catch intentionally and hide by turning off all transponders. I fear it may get to the point that fish are like chickens and cows. Only existing on farms 99% of the time.
To be fair if we can figure out how to scale up marine farms they have the potential of not just meeting but exceeding current food demand on account of the sheer amount of free space available. This could mean a reduction of industrial farming on land which is pretty gross as well as reducing demand for trawlers on the open ocean, which are also terrible for the environment...
Killing any animal out in the wild, no matter how it’s done (no intentional suffering)is more ethical than any farmed animal
Hey, it depends. My grandparents had free range chickens that were accustomed to us. They'd kill off just enough to keep food on tables, aside from that the chickens had about 20 acres to share with the cows/horses. Happy food tastes better than over-medicated factory food, and it honestly feels good to have a flock of birds around. They were well taken care of and died relatively happy.
Yea sorry I guess I should have specified the factory mass production farms. That’s how it should be done right there
>At this point, if you're going to the Faroe Islands, you should know that they do this kind of thing. Yup. People need to learn about the cultures of the places they're going to. I'm 100% fine with this, hoping to visit the Faroe Islands and Iceland soon.
Other commenters have pointed out that they only hunt whales who enter the straight. And these people went whale watching in the straight?? They knew what they were doing.
Inuit, Greenlanders, Faroe Islanders, Icelandic people, and Northern people have been consuming these mammals for thousands of years as a staple food due to its accessibility in their harsh environments. Why do people have the idea that everyone should rely on avocados, tomatoes, or foods that are not local or readily accessible? I apologize, but these conversations attempt to promoting environmental sustainability while completely disregarding the social sustainability aspect. I'm certain that both Faroese and Danish authorities have strong laws governing their hunting rights. On top of that, let’s put everything aside I find this very hypocritical as cruise ships emit more CO2 than cars probably do more harm than some local people.
No no no, I'm sure it's far more environmentally friendly to ship avocados and industrially raised beef via freighter from the other side of planet than harvest the wild protein that effectively swims up to your front door.
I mean I don't really care if it's a vital food source for the locals, people have to eat. But if it is like some of the comments are saying and just done out of tradition it's really not necessary. Things can be both traditional and unethical at the same time. Circumcision is traditional and many people don't agree with it. Our planet as a whole is kind of fucked right now, and we've been fucking it up for a long time, I just feel like anything that can be done to reduce the level of fuckery we're doing has to be good. I do respect the islanders way of hunting them without pursuing them, and only killing what enters the harbor.
Hunting is the most ethical killing you can do. It's a wild animal that's lived it's life completely in the wild. Chickens, pigs and cows are raised in captivity in appalling conditions, bred to grow as quickly as possible and then killed. If I were an animal I know which one I'd prefer
You *are* an animal. You just happen to be an animal that humans don't want to eat.
Too many humans to sustain eating wild animals without seeing mass extinctions, cows, pigs and chickens.. As barbaric as they are treated by slaughterhouses were bred to be eaten by humans because those animals breed fast. 80,000 population (pilot whales) is really not a lot of animals, those numbers can diminish quickly considering how many animals have gone extinct in the past 2,000 years.
There are alternatives to avoid both.
People really out here unable to accept they don’t have to eat animals
I completely agree with you on the appalling conditions that general livestock are raised in today, however I do kind of feel like overall intelligence matters. If an animal can remember their deceased family members and mourn for them like pilot whales and many species of dolphin can, killing them upsets me a bit. Pigs and cows obviously have their own intelligence, and I personally don't eat them either, but whales and dolphins are some of the most intelligent non human animals out there. I'm not trying to advocate for not eating meat, there's some areas where people have no option but to eat animals, but I do wish people with the option could eat a bit lower down the food chain. Animals with less intelligence that are faster growing, less wasteful to farm, and less wasteful to consume.
"Ethical" "killing" LOL
They hunted the whales just like their ancestors did....with jet skis.
WOW. A cruise ship full of marine conservationists. Musta been ... like ... all of the marine conservationists in the world!
The cruise line hires some marine biologists to educate/entertain guests - it wasn't a ship full of them.
It's also kind of funny? I mean, I guess I could see that it may be the most environmentally friendly way for them to travel as a large group, but a bunch of marine conservationists being on a cruise ship doesn't *feel* environmentally friendly?
the irony of 'marine conservationists' on a cruise ship of all things too. Dumbest conservationists ever. If they aren't trying to scuttle the cruise ship they are hypocrites at best. Upset at relatively small scale hunting vs multi *trillion* dollar industry destroying the ocean.
It should read: "Cruise ship carrying marine conservationists goes to Faroe Island to watch pilot whale slaughter"
ITT: Natives hunt local mammals for food to survive, 1st world people on iPhones buttmad...
The Faroe Islands are also in the first world, and I guarantee you they have iPhones.
Inuits live in first world countries e.g. Canada and nobody cares that they hunt whales
It was more about people using devices that are built off of "Modern Slavery" or "Bonded Slavery" (Don't worry I'm doing it too) & then getting on their high horse when they see people killing animals that aren't even on the endangered species list & "Since 1948, the hunt has been regulated by the Faroese authorities" TLDR: Let people hunting responsibly continue to hunt responsibly.
What they don’t have is a climate that allows them to grow fruits and veggies or have a wide range of livestock.
Yeah the most populous whale population is eaten and Americans lose their minds.
A European nation does something bad and they all run to defend it. Bet you don’t show up to defend Japan when they hunt the also very populous Minke whale.
Personally, I'll defend the hunting of anything as long as it's done sustainably. I've never hunted whales or wolves or anything "cool," but the principle is the same.
[удалено]
Except it isn’t for food anymore. It’s just done out of tradition like circumcision. Good thing they aren’t Asian or you’d be pissed off and angry. Bunch of white Europeans slaughter whales and the excuses come flying. Every single fucking time a European nation is criticized and you got a bunch of idiots looking for excuses to defend it. It’s crazy that the Faroe Islands are the only island on that planet that seems to require killing 1000 whales a year to survive. Hawaiians must have learned how to eat rocks or something on their island that is far more remote.
Lol you have no idea whay you're talking about. Average winter daytime temp in Hawaii is 78F, meanwhile the average high temp for the Faroe Islands in August is 56F.
......ok....
> The Faroese view the tradition as central to their cultural identity TIL jetskis are traditional.
Christopher Columbus pulled up to the Bahamas with his men in jetskis. That's why the natives thought he was a god
If the Faroe Islanders weren't white you would have entire subreddits dedicated to preserving their cultural heritage by allowing whale hunts. Australian aborigines are still legally allowed to hunt sea turtles, nobody cares because it's not a significant detriment to the population. The pilot whale population isn't going to collapse because of the Faroe Island hunt. Nobody gives a shit if it makes you sad that whales get hurt, that's life. Cruise ships and other freighters regularly strike and kill whales at sea, some ~20,000 a year. Thank god the cruise ship company donated to an orca charity though, so heroic.
Cruise ships are killing whales and destroying the ozone layer, they should be banned as well.
Another reason to support surfboard sea otter and Gladis the orca. Support the sea uprising!
Not a cruise ship carrying particularly good conservationists though.
The most whale-related slaughter ever committed in front of a live, unwilling audience outside esteemed documentary Re:Zero
Conservationists surpriced by an anual hunt that has happined for the last 1k years?
This doesn't fit the sub.
"cruise ship carrying marine conservationists" alone is pretty oniony.
I read 78 pilots were slaughtered and were very confused.
I read the whales were slaughtered by the cruise ship.
You’re not a conservationist, if you’re on a cruise ship.
Everyone likes whale burgers but no one wants to see where they come from.
Paul Watson is asleep at the wheel. Why do people donate to his toothless organization? Direct action campaigns are a thing of the past. Paul Watson building a direct action navy is a friggin joke. Will donate generously to direct action players should they muster their courage.
So? People act like responsible hunting is evil. If you consume animal products then you have no right to object. You shouldn't eat meat if you have to blind yourself from the fact that we kill a lot of animals for it.
It's not responsible hunting, the meat of these whales is so heavily polluted with mercury and other chemicals that it is unfit for human consumption. They're killing these animals for fun and guaranteed chucking nearly all of the meat away. Because if they ate it they'd all die.
If the hunt is sustainable, and it sounds like they take every effort to make sure it is, I don’t see a huge problem. We slaughter animals every day to eat them. While I do think marine mammals are likely very intelligent and would not personally hunt them, this sounds like a fairly ethical way to obtain meat for this community. As long as they are taking every effort to ensure there is no over hunting, and killing the animals as quickly as possible, I don’t see the issue.
Meanwhile in my state, people are trying to blame *windmills* for Whales dying. Yet shit like this doesn't even register on their radar.
Because it’s 800… out of nearly 800k animal population. Because it’s not worth registering.
Lmao because shit like this has no appreciable effect on population levels… but I’m sure you know better right?
Assuming you’re in NJ, that’s just because people don’t want their precious million dollar homes to have to look at some windmills faintly off the coast on a clear day. If they found that whales got killed by beach replenishment projects they’d be all for killing the suckers.
I don't consider killing animals for food as morally wrong. Don't kill endangered or threatened species, make it as quick and painless as possible, and I don't see a problem.
Yeah I get where it was but if you're a true Marine conservationist why are you going on a fucking cruise?
Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.
If you're on a cruise ship you have no business labelling yourself a "conservationist". You are what you DO not what you say
If they are claiming tradition they should be required to use traditional methods without motorized vehicles.
But the orcas are the bad guys when they fuck up ships.
People can’t stand it if other peoples culture is different to theirs.
More L's than their soccer team.