Tag Archives: cetaceans

TWEETSTORM: End the Faroe Grind

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By Kirsten Massebeau

Ocean activists are again joining their voices to speak out on behalf of the small whales and dolphins that migrate past the Faroe Islands, on the gulf stream, North of Scotland, and South of Iceland. The archipelago is composed of 18 islands covering 1399 km2 and is 113 km long and 75 km wide, roughly in the shape of an arrowhead (source). In 2013 the beautiful islands offer a great many things to visitors or to people wanting to relocate and improve their quality of life. While unemployment is prevalent in the Faroe Islands the average income on the Faroe Island is a GDP – per capita (PPP): $30,500 (2008 est.) Many of the growing industries on the islands are touted as attractors for new investors, and the beautiful landscape attracts many visitors.

Website “Invest In The Faroes” states:

The community of the Faroe Islands is modern and highly developed with a standard of living that is comparable to other Scandinavian countries.

In 2007, the National Geographic Traveler and the National Geographic Center for Sustainable Destinations named the Faroe Islands the world’s most unspoiled island community and appealing destination to visit.

The Faroe Islands are not merely a delight to the traveller, but also offer a good quality of life to the people who inhabit the archipelago (source)

Invest in the Faroes lists: Fish Farming, Marine Biotech, Suppliers to the Maritime Industries, and Marine Research & Development encouraging investors in all areas. In addition oil exploration began and was licensed in 2000. “Drilling the eight exploration well started in 2012 and continues in 2013 with Statoil as the operator in partnership with ExxonMobil and Atlantic Petroleum”. (source)

While the Faroese people are known for their hospitality to their human visitors, and investors, the same hand of friendship is not extended to the highly intelligent pilot whales and dolphins that migrates the gulf stream past their islands each year.

The Faroese disregard the Bonn Convention ban on killing small whales and dolphins and continue the mass killings of huge pods of small cetaceans. The island residents claim the toxic dolphin meat is still an essential part of their diet but scientists disagree:

Dietary recommendations regarding pilot whale meat and blubber in the Faroe Islands

Pál Weihe, Høgni Debes Joensen

“The latest analyses show that the mercury concentration of pilot whale remains high, with an average of about 2 micrograms per gram. In the EU, the highest limit value of 1 microgram per gram is only applicable to the most contaminated species of fish. This limit is exceeded by most pilot whales.” The physicians noted that mercury and PCB exposure contribute to Parkinson’s disease in adults, impaired immunity in children, and compromised fetal development. “It is recommended that pilot whale is no longer used for human consumption,” they warned. (Source)

A living pilot whale restrained by the sharp hook in the blowhole about to be slaughtered. November 16, 2013

A pilot whale is restrained using by placing a large hook in the sensitive blowhole. The man above is attempting to locate the spinal cord which he hopes to sever using a technique called pithing. The dolphin is the paralyzed but still conscious, ready for slaughter.

“A whale’s blowhole is a remarkably refined evolutionary development which allows it to breathe in and out in about a second, without letting any water enter the lungs. It can be speculated that sticking a metal hook into the blowhole and dragging a large whale through the water must cause alarm, distress, and pain” (source).

The drive hunts, or the ‘Grinds,’ are an extremely inhumane practice where entire family groups are rounded up out at sea by small motor boats and driven to the shore where they are killed in shallow bays. Once they beach, blunt-ended metal hooks inserted into their blowholes are used to drag the whales up the beach or in the shallows, where they are killed with a knife cut to their major blood vessels.

Whales thrash their families are slaughtered in the shallow waters.

Whales thrash as the entire pod is slaughtered in shallow rocky waters.

WDCS believes that the driving, dragging and killing, all of which takes place within view of their pod members, is intensely stressful and cruel. Pilot whales, and other species, including bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic white-sided dolphins and northern bottlenose whales, are still hunted for their meat in the Faroe Islands (Source)

“On health grounds alone, these whales should not have been killed. Combine that with the inherent cruelty, and serious questions continue to be asked of this highly modern society as to why the needless massacre of pilot whales continues“(source).

Despite the International Union For Conservation of Nature Red Listing the Globicephala melas of the Delphinidae,long finned pilot whale as data deficient huge pods continue to be driven into Faroese bays and coves where they are brutally slaughtered. In addition to pilot whales, this year, 430 Atlantic white sided dolphins were added to their long list of victims. 1534 small whales/ dolphins have been slaughtered in the Faroe Islands since the beginning of 2013. See the break down HERE.

  		•  ON YOUR COMPUTER (TWITTER)
  		• JOIN our TWEETSTORM on November 19th to voice an end to the Faroe grind. The grind is the hunt of pilot whales and other dolphins in the Faroe Islands.TWEETSTORM TIME ANNOUNCER: ► http://bit.ly/18CAt1E
    COUNTDOWN TO TWEETSTORM: ► http://bit.ly/19s4zo1LIST OF PRE-MADE TWEETS WILL BE AVAILABLE SHORTLY BEFORE THE SCHEDULED TWEETSTORM.

Another Brutal Slaughter of Risso Dolphins in The Cove

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A Risso Dolphin, Photo provided by Izumi Ishii ex-dolphin hunter

Yesterday a pod of Risso dolphins with a baby were brutally slaughtered in The Cove. The of  dolphin hunters of Taiji show no mercy when it comes to the woman and children of the people of the sea. On October 4th The Taiji Dolphin Hunters drove a pod of striped dolphins in the cove with a newborn infant among the pod. Get Educated Legg recounts the moments before slaughter,  We watched as they rounded the dolphins into the cove but not before we saw something magical, a baby dolphin, a newborn! jumping 3 metres into the air. they were then taken to their death. only one was chosen for a life of captivity and to me, he was the unlucky one. we could hear the screams.” http://geteducatedlegg.blogspot.com/2011/10/red-october-begins.html

Now again today another pod of Risso dolphins has been driven into “The Cove” every dolphin in the pod brutally slaughter with their suffering lasting almost ten minutes. This Dieter Hagmann video secretly captured last season got behind the blue tarp to reveal how the people of the sea were being murdered:

This blood curdling video shows suffering beyond what any person should ever have to endure. Each dolphin that dies behind the blue tarp is a mother, a father, a child, an infant. These pods of dolphins are communities of sea people. Within their highly social and complex framework these families live symbiotically with the oceans, and the earth.

“Bottlenose dolphins have convincingly demonstrated that they use a mirror to investigate their own bodies, showing that they have a sense of self (Reiss and Mrino, 2001). These findings are consistent with further evidence for self-awareness and self-monitoring in dolphins and related cognitive abilities (see Marino et al, 2008, for a review). In particular, the highly elaborated cingulate and insular cortex in cetacean brains are consistent with the idea that these animals are highly sophisticated and sensitive in the emotional and social -emotional sophistication not achieved by other animals including humans.

All of the above factors provide cause for concern over the vulnerability of whales and dolphins when placed in stressful situations, including  capture, drive hunts, and the disruption of social networks. Moreover, conservation measures that do not take into account the psychological complexity of these animals will do little to alleviate suffering on an individual level. Beyond our scientific understanding, our current knowledge of cetacean brains and cognitive abilities demands we develop a new ethic of respect and coexistence with them” (Phillip Brakes and Mark Peter Simmonds, Whales and Dolphins Cognition, Culture, Conservation and Human Perceptions, Washington, DC, Earthscan, 2011).

Surely the dolphin hunters have family and children. Why they cannot show the people of the sea mercy, why they will not recognize cetacean intelligence is a mystery to the world. Why they would rather murder, than explore the many lessons the people of the sea offer us as humans. “One of Taiji’s excuses for killing dolphins is “pest control” – they claim the dolphins are eating all their fish. I’ll point out that Risso dolphins primarily hunt deep sea squid at night. The squid are so deep, it’s highly unlikely that Taiji’s fishermen would ever catch these squid in the first place. So, perhaps – they should consider what Risso dolphins actually eat before making these statements.”(Brian Barnes, 10/24/2011, FB).

Photo of the Dolphin Hunter provided by Martyn Stewart October 23 2011

The dolphin hunters want to be understood by the world but all the world can see is a sea of blood. All the world can hear is the dolphins crying out for mercy as the hunters shove bamboo nails in their blow holes, while slowly severing their spinal cords. It makes us wonder why these men cannot see themselves through the worlds eyes. They know they are hated, they know the world sees them as monsters yet they continue murdering the people of the sea.

As slaughter after slaughter goes on we the activists, the voice of the dolphins, will continue to document the atrocities of the Taiji dolphin hunters taking place in “The Cove” and we will broadcast to the world until public out cry forces the hunters to end the systematic slaughter of dolphins migrating past Taiji, Japan.

Please join us as we fight to save the people of the sea before it’s too late. The links below all have take action links to help save the dolphins of Taiji.

http://savemistythedolphin.blogspot.com/p/taiji-urgent-contact-list.html

http://www.savejapandolphins.org/

http://www.seashepherd.org/cove-guardians/