HARPER PESTINGER & CAELAN MONKMAN
In Iceland and the Faroe Islands, it’s a practice that’s been kept alive for centuries by commerce and culture. Some locals are fiercely nationalistic in their pride for the hunt, but passionate activism, dwindling demand, and fears of polluted meat are complicating whale hunting’s fate. With pressure mounting, has the ship sailed on this age-old tradition?
Thousands of kilometres from mainland Europe, the far-flung Faroe Islands and Iceland are globally noted for their remote on-land beauty, yet their waters are the battlefield of a raging environmental war.
The Faroe Islands — a self-governing archipelago part of the Kingdom of Denmark — and Iceland are two of few places where whales are still hunted today.
Iceland is one of just three countries hunting whales commercially. In the Faroe Islands, meanwhile, whales are only caught opportunistically. Their practice is non-commercial and carried out only when pods of whales are sighted near shore, and as a source of food for the community members of the remote, 50,000-person nation.
But all this could soon change. Whaling, long the subject of an often emotionally driven animal rights and cultural debate, is seeing new threats — mainly from ocean pollution and, in Iceland, a changing industry landscape.
‘Call me Kristján’ — Iceland’s last whaler
Photo: Harper Pestinger
At Reykjavik’s Old Harbour, none of the construction workers, tour guides, or rain jacket-clad tourists look particularly happy as they get their taste of Iceland’s infamous volatile weather. The biting Atlantic winds and dense walls of weeks-docked boats impress a sense of decline, fitting for a sector in dire straits.
Now run by just one man, Iceland’s whaling industry is on its last legs. Kristján Loftsson is that one man and, since 1974, has been CEO of Hvalur hf. — the country’s last commercial whaling company.
Loftsson, 80, is universally recognised as unwaveringly proud and steadfast, having inherited the CEO role from his father Loftur Bjarnason — Hvalur’s founder — whom he famously promised to keep his beloved business alive until he no longer can. He declined to be interviewed, responding in an email:
“I get so many requests like yours over the year that quite frankly, I am not interested to discuss with you the morality of whaling. I am not aware of the whaling’s ‘immoral’ reputation.”
Today, the company is one of Iceland’s most powerful investors, but of late has made very little money from whaling itself. Its rival, Útgerðarfélagið Fjörður ehf, ceased its minke whaling operations in 2018; now just Hvalur remains, hunting only fin whales.
In 2019, Japan ended its 33-year commercial whaling hiatus, effectively putting an end to Hvalur’s export market. So, citing fisheries minister Svandis Svavarsdóttir’s comment that there are “few justifications” to continue the practice, Icelanders widely expect this hunting season to be Hvalur’s last.
Even now, the meat — usually minke whale from Norway — is primarily consumed by curious tourists; only 2% of Icelanders say they consume whale “regularly.”
The question of sustainability
Just metres away from the Hvalur ships, docked on the opposite side of the overcast Old Harbour pier, are several boats marked “Elding”.
Founded in 2000, they label themselves Reykjavik’s “whale watching pioneers.” After pouring a cup of tea behind the counter on one of the company’s sparkling, well-equipped vessels, Elding’s head naturalist and skipper Megan Whittaker speaks to In Motion.
“Whales have so much importance in the ecosystem,” Whittaker, an Icelandic-speaking Brit, says. “They take out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they give nutrients to the waters they’re in, and that feeds the basis of the food chain.”
“Most of the arguments for the (Icelandic) whaling are that they eat too much of the fish – they say we need to cull the whales to conserve the fish stocks. There’s no actual evidence towards that.”
In the Faroe Islands, anti-whaling advocates point to the sustainability of the hunts themselves. The Faroese primarily hunt pilot whales — technically a species of dolphin — during their opportunistic hunts, called grindadráp (roughly translated to ‘pilot whale killing’). The tradition dates back to the ninth-century Viking Age, and catch data exists from 1584.
Bjarni Mikkelsen is the leader of the marine mammals department at Havstovan Faroe Marine Research Institute in the Faroes’ capital, Tórshavn. Part of the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO), Havstovan conducts research on the population levels of marine animals around the Faroe Islands and makes recommendations to the Faroese government for sustainable harvests.
Mikkelsen and his coworkers at Havstovan combine their data with the centuries of catch statistics to make their recommendations. “So it’s always based on a (hunt) which is sustainable and will ensure that populations will still be able to increase if an increase should be happening,” Mikkelsen says.
Photo: Caelan Monkman
Marna Frida Olsen, the Faroe Islands campaign coordinator for Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), believes there are more factors to consider when looking at sustainability which can’t always be seen solely through population figures.
“I think we should look at sustainability as more than just population estimates,” Olsen suggests. “Population estimates are quite difficult to put together and compare, and they don’t really consider local population dynamics. Many species of whales and dolphins travel very far and are interconnected across vast distances. Also, whales and dolphins have a slow reproduction rate, giving birth to only one calf every few years, and they are highly affected by human-induced threats.”
Mikkelsen admits there are challenges when it comes to accurately estimating animal population numbers across the entire North Atlantic, but as a research centre, he explains, it would be unbeneficial for everyone to have data with questionable accuracy.
“When we do this population service, we keep to international standards,” says Mikkelsen, before going on to explain that the high number of pilot whale sightings also helps to ensure better data. “(Pilot whales) seem to be the most frequently encountered species in the North Atlantic. Because of this, our estimates are more precise.”
For Mikkelsen, there are far bigger threats to the whales’ long-term wellbeing than the grindadráp. The Faroese harvest — which kills around 600 pilot whales annually — cannot singlehandedly endanger the population, which Havstovan estimates to be somewhere between 300,000-500,000. Instead, the far bigger concern is pollution.
“If something is threatening the long-term pilot whales in the North Atlantic, it could be other things like pollution which could impact their reproductive capacity; not the removal of 600 animals in the Faroes.”
Mercury in your meal — Pollution raising human health concerns
Although ocean pollution has long been a concern for scientists and environmental activists, it’s not been until fairly recently that this concern extended to the humans who consume seafood.
As whales are at the top of the food chain, they have higher concentrations of pollutant. When humans consume their meat, those pollutants are consumed as well. Heavy metals and chemicals such as mercury and DDT are found in large quantities in whale meat, increasing the risk of diseases like Parkinsons and other neurological problems.
These concerns came to a head in 2008, when the Faroese chief medical officer, Høgni Debes Joensen, released a statement concluding that whales should no longer be considered fit for human consumption. The statement came along with recommendations from the Faroese government, suggesting the Faroese limit their consumption of whale to once or twice a month, and for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers to refrain from eating whale altogether.
Despite the 2008 recommendations, many Faroese citizens continue to eat whale meat, some more than the recommended amount.
“People have been warned to reduce their consumption, but honestly, there are lots of foods which people are advised to reduce their consumption of, but don’t,” says Russell Fielding, a professor at Coastal Carolina University. Fielding is a cultural geographer and has done research on the Faroes since his graduate school years, with most of his career being focused on pilot whale hunting in the Faroe Islands and the Caribbean.
The reasons for this continued consumption vary. Some people don’t properly understand the health advice, Fielding says. Others simply choose to ignore them. Some elderly Faroese citizens In Motion spoke with simply believe they won’t live long enough to experience the longer-term effects of mercury poisoning. Many young girls and women, on the other hand, avoid dishes with whale altogether, concerned about the effects of heavy metals on their reproductive systems.
Sámal Midjord, 39, lives in Vágur, the only remaining village in the Faroe Islands to use rowboats in the grindadráp. Midjord has eaten whale meat his whole life, and though he’s reduced his consumption in recent years, he continues to eat whale about once a month. Midjord explains “everybody who lives (in Vágur) has a right to a piece of whale meat,” and believes that most Faroese his age are, like himself, unconcerned by possible health effects, “because we are eating it so rarely.”
But another reason for the continued consumption of whale stems from an unlikely source: The anti-whaling movement itself.
“There’s been a lot of campaigning against whaling, and some of those campaigns have been quite aggressive,” says Olsen of the WDC — an organisation which itself has organised anti-whaling campaigns. “What we’ve seen from this is that local support has increased, especially among young people that started participating in the hunts. It’s sort of like a counter-reaction to all the criticism coming from the outside.”
Fielding noted the same thing in a 2018 op-ed for Salon Magazine, writing:
“Messages about contamination were intermingled with all the other forms of anti-whaling action and discourse. To the Faroese, eating whale meat and blubber became a way to express national solidarity, to oppose the voices from abroad telling them to stop. And, although those voices spoke truth with regard to the contaminant issue, the collective desire to stand up against them overpowered health concerns.”
The Greenpeace splinter group dividing the islands
When speaking with sources in the Faroe Islands, In Motion was often met with the following question: “You’re not with Sea Shepherd, are you?”
The question, while mostly asked in jest, carried with it an obvious truth: Many of the Faroese view animal rights groups like Sea Shepherd with a degree of mistrust.
The marine conservation organisation has garnered a negative reputation in the Faroes, due in large part to their use of inflammatory language about Faroese citizens and the grindadráp online and in the media. Today, the Faroese government prohibits the group’s ships from entering Faroese waters, a response to their increased presence during hunts in the early 2010s.
Despite the hostility towards each other, Fielding believes groups like Sea Shepherd have missed opportunities to work with the pro-whaling Faroese due to a shared sentiment: Neither want to see pollution result in the extinction of the whales.
“But you get no sense of that when they’re having dialogue with each other,” Fielding says. “There’s no ‘we’re in this together’ kind of thing. Whaling has really become a dividing point between them, which to me is a pity. Pollution is a much bigger problem for the environment than whaling.”
Photo: Caelan Monkman
Similar attitudes towards Sea Shepherd are widespread in Iceland, and it’s not just the public who harbour ill feelings towards the charity. Whittaker says that while Elding works closely with “many NGOs”, they don’t have “any connection with Sea Shepherd.”
“I think they don’t always do the right thing,” Whittaker opines. “It’s a bit too aggressive. The whalers — even though we don’t agree with what they’re doing — are still people. They still work in society, they have families, they have kids. And Sea Shepherd is putting these people in danger, as well as the people that work with Sea Shepherd.”
In 1986, following Iceland’s refusal to abide by the International Whaling Commission’s freshly implemented whaling moratorium, the activist group sank two unoccupied whaling vessels and destroyed the nation’s only whale processing facility.
Responsibility for the operation was claimed by Paul Watson, an early board member of Greenpeace and founder of its more radical splinter group Sea Shepherd. Watson has garnered a negative reputation in many current and former whaling nations (there is even a popular Faroese song that features the lyrics “fuck Paul Watson”). Watson has since departed Sea Shepherd, cutting all ties in July 2022 due to the organisation’s “new direction” and softening tactics.
“Currently Sea Shepherd globally does not employ hard tactics. I would argue for the opposite, actually,” says Stella Anton of Sjávarhirðir, known as Sea Shepherd Iceland until June 2023. Greek born and a long-time vegan, Anton became a founding volunteer member of Sea Shepherd’s Icelandic chapter in 2018.
“If we’re talking about Sea Shepherd Global, they almost exclusively partner with governments to help their coast guards patrol their waters for illegal fishing, or do educational campaigns and research activities,” she says.
However, according to Anton, the eight-person team at Sjávarhirðir — the Icelandic translation of ‘sea shepherd’ — still “very, very firmly supports” Paul Watson, despite him being banned from re-entering the island nation.
“Icelanders are very sensitive when the name Sea Shepherd comes up. We’re still not very popular as a conservation organisation here,” she tells.
So why, given their opposition, given fin whales’ status as non-endangered, and given the near-dead nature of Iceland’s industry, are Anton and her colleagues continuing to fight this battle?
“When you’ve been at the whaling station, watching those animals be brought by the boats with two, three, four harpoons, and you see all this water splashing from inside them. You realise they have drowned,” Anton recalls. “It’s traumatising.”
According to a May 2023 report from the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST), of the catch of 58 whales assessed, 67% died or lost consciousness “quickly or immediately”, another 24% were shot more than once, and the median time from first shot to death of non-immediately killed whales was 11.5 minutes. Whales in Icelandic waters are shot with grenade-tipped harpoons that explode seconds after impact.
Iceland’s Animal Welfare Act stipulates animals must be killed swiftly and painlessly, and not have unnecessary pain or fear inflicted upon them. Whalers must also film their hunts and send the raw footage to MAST.
In its statement, MAST says “the killing of some large whales in Iceland has taken too long based on the main objectives of the law on animal welfare. However, the agency believes the best known methods were used during the hunts…and therefore the provisions on hunting in the Animal Welfare Act have not been violated.”
“A cultural tipping point”
While Iceland’s whaling industry may be nearing its end, the future of the Faroes’ community-based whaling remains much more uncertain.
Fielding is in the Faroe Islands now, working alongside researchers on the possible cultural, economic, and health consequences should the Faroese elect to end whale consumption for good. The country has reached what he calls a “cultural tipping point”, where “each individual is then forced to make a choice whether to stick with the tradition — at the expense of their own health — or to change, to do something new.”
“For one thing, it’s not up to me, that’s a Faroese decision — it’s not for foreign researchers like me to make,” Fielding remarks. “What I think is more likely for them to decide, though, is for it to continue as a practice, just less.”
And in Iceland, the famous Hvalur ships seem not far from being docked for the final time, despite Kristjan Loftsson’s vow to sustain the industry’s life.
“Culture never dies, culture never goes away,” Fielding points out. “But culture adapts, and there comes a point where that adaptation is necessary because your culture is no longer serving you in the way that it did before.”
