[LINK] "Faroe Island Whaling, a 1,000-Year Tradition, Comes Under Renewed Fire"
Jane J. Lee's National Geographic article profiles, with distressingly--but necessarily--graphic pictures, the ongoing controversy over whaling in the Faroes.
One positive sign is that apparently it has become much less an issue of subsistence or economics and more a cultural trait. These can be changed more readily.
The recent arrest of 14 volunteers working to stop whaling in the North Atlantic Ocean's Faroe Islands has focused a spotlight once again on a local tradition stretching back over a thousand years.
Six of the protesters were found guilty this week of interfering with the grindadráp, or grind, as these drive hunts are called, according to a statement released by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The remaining eight will appear in court on September 25. The activist group often makes headlines for the confrontational tactics used by some of its members-such as ramming whaling ships in the ocean around Antarctica.
The organization's campaign to end these hunts began in the 1980s, says Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, and won't stop until the practice disappears.
During a grind, a flotilla of small boats drives whales or dolphins into a shallow bay where they can be easily killed with knives. Grinds are the longest continuously practiced and relatively unchanged whaling tradition in the world, says Russell Fielding, a geographer from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He has studied the Faroe Island grinds since 2005.
Other cultures in the Arctic and Europe started whaling long before the Faroese, Fielding says. But they have either stopped or changed their techniques quite a bit.
One positive sign is that apparently it has become much less an issue of subsistence or economics and more a cultural trait. These can be changed more readily.
The recent arrest of 14 volunteers working to stop whaling in the North Atlantic Ocean's Faroe Islands has focused a spotlight once again on a local tradition stretching back over a thousand years.
Six of the protesters were found guilty this week of interfering with the grindadráp, or grind, as these drive hunts are called, according to a statement released by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The remaining eight will appear in court on September 25. The activist group often makes headlines for the confrontational tactics used by some of its members-such as ramming whaling ships in the ocean around Antarctica.
The organization's campaign to end these hunts began in the 1980s, says Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, and won't stop until the practice disappears.
During a grind, a flotilla of small boats drives whales or dolphins into a shallow bay where they can be easily killed with knives. Grinds are the longest continuously practiced and relatively unchanged whaling tradition in the world, says Russell Fielding, a geographer from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He has studied the Faroe Island grinds since 2005.
Other cultures in the Arctic and Europe started whaling long before the Faroese, Fielding says. But they have either stopped or changed their techniques quite a bit.