What is "the Grind"?
Grind, short for Grindadráp, in Swedish dráp translates to 'manslaughter'.
It is the “traditional” barbaric bloody slaughter of pilot whales (dolphins and porpoises as well) with an average of 880-1000 pilot whales brutally murdered annually. The Faroe Islands are a territory of Denmark, a region that holds one of the highest standards of living in Europe, and while there is a ban on whaling in these waters per international law (IWC - International Whaling Commission https://iwc.int/home) Denmark protects the Grind
through a small loophole: “subsistence hunting of small cetaceans”. However, the local chief medical officers have declared that pilot whale meat now contains too much mercury to be safe for human consumption.
Many times the whale meat is simply left to rot on the beach.
What does it look like?
Cetaceans (whales, dolphins) are self-aware, highly intelligent, social animals that move about in families (generations) or ‘pods’. Pods are driven by small boats creating harassing noise to frighten and panic the animals so as to move them into shallow water, where they are gaffed and stabbed.
There is this sound: the cries of cetaceans 'screaming' as they die in the sea of blood of their family members; babies are pulled from their mother's wombs - none are spared.
A single grind may completely decimate a pod, preventing reproduction and recruitment of any offspring.
Science perspective: Is it "sustainable" practice?
Commentary by Maura Kelley,
Marine Ecologist
What is "the Grind"?
Grind, short for Grindadráp, in Swedish dráp translates to 'manslaughter'.
It is the “traditional” barbaric bloody slaughter of pilot whales (dolphins and porpoises as well) with an average of 880-1000 pilot whales brutally murdered annually. The Faroe Islands are a territory of Denmark, a region that holds one of the highest standards of living in Europe, and while there is a ban on whaling in these waters per international law (IWC - International Whaling Commission https://iwc.int/home) Denmark protects the Grind
through a small loophole: “subsistence hunting of small cetaceans”. However, the local chief medical officers have declared that pilot whale meat now contains too much mercury to be safe for human consumption.
Many times the whale meat is simply left to rot on the beach.
What does it look like?
Cetaceans (whales, dolphins) are self-aware, highly intelligent, social animals that move about in families (generations) or ‘pods’. Pods are driven by small boats creating harassing noise to frighten and panic the animals so as to move them into shallow water, where they are gaffed and stabbed.
There is this sound: the cries of cetaceans 'screaming' as they die in the sea of blood of their family members; babies are pulled from their mother's wombs - none are spared.
A single grind may completely decimate a pod, preventing reproduction and recruitment of any offspring.
Science perspective: Is it "sustainable" practice?
Commentary by Maura Kelley,
Marine Ecologist
Despite what is printed about the ‘Faroe Islands Pilot Whale Hunt’ being a ‘sustainable’ practice, this will not be the case going into the future, for several reasons and therefore should not continue.
First, the population data that this ‘sustainable hunt’ is based upon is information from nearly 27 years ago (estimating 778,000 in 1989). This lack of current data is reflected in their status on the IUCN’s ‘Red List’: "Data Deficient". In addition, other subpopulations in the North and Baltic Seas are already listed in Appendix II – Migratory Species requiring international cooperation by ‘The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals’ (CMS or the Bonn Convention) whose purpose is to conserve terrestrial, marine and avian migratory species throughout their range, and is an intergovernmental treaty under the ‘United Nations Environment Programme’. In fact, regarding long-finned populations around the Faroes, Taylor et al. (2008) state: “recent data on movements in the northwest and northeast Atlantic suggest that these subpopulations should also be included in Appendix II of CMS.” In addition, there is evidence that long-finned pilot whales may actually comprise two or more species, and if this designation is made, the classification of new species will likely change, warranting re-listing under higher categories of risk (Taylor et al., 2008).
Second, in terms of biology (life-history traits), long-finned pilot whales have the potential to be a species at risk. They are a ‘K-selected’ species that have a slow growth rate to maturity and only a single offspring, which make them more susceptible to population declines and recovery difficult. Females do not reach maturity until approx. 8 years and males at approx. 12 years. They have one of the longest birth intervals of all cetaceans, calving only once every 3-5 years, with a gestation lasting 12–16 months. Nursing in pilot whales can continue for many years, and females other than the biological mother can offer to suckle calves (Lockyer, 2007). When a Faroes kill takes place, the entire pod composed of generations is slaughtered, eliminating the possibility of any recruitment from that pod and its gene flow to other pods is terminated.
Third, long term effects of climate change remain unknown, but likely will have an effect on prey availability. We have seen an example of this hypothesis in Pacific migratory whales (gray whales) in strandings along the U.S. Pacific coast due to starvation as prey availability (krill) has been affected by climate change (Le Boeuf et al., 2000; Moore, Grebmeier & Davies, 2003) and range changes occurring. Anthropogenic activities such as continued overfishing and the susceptibility of cetaceans to fisheries bycatch and entanglement in lines remains a severe problem (Berta et al., 2015) contributing to declines. As the human population increases, fisheries will increase needed food production, in turn, increasing bycatch. Another threat that can cause widespread declines is high levels of anthropogenic sound, especially military sonar and seismic surveys. Fahlman et al. (2014) showed that deep-diving whales, such as long-finned pilot whales are particularly susceptible to gas bubble emboli (DCS) caused from anthropogenic sound.
Lastly, the risk to human-health due to increasing toxicity levels in the tissues of long-finned pilot whales around the Faroe Islands will make it a non-sustainable food source. The issue of environmental pollutants remains and is the leading threat to the grindadráp (Fielding, 2010). Mercury, lead, cadmium and selenium were measured in blood from pilot whales caught at the Faroe Islands and concentrations exceeded levels associated with severe toxicity in several other mammal species (Nielsen et al., 2000). Caurant and Amiard-Triquet (1995) examined cadmium concentrations in pilot whales around the Faroe Islands and both blood and urine showed higher than minimum adverse-effect levels established for human beings. While the whales themselves show a resistance to metallic pollutants which allows for their survival, upon examination of organs from human bodies from Faroe Islanders, the high concentrations of mercury was reflected from the intake of pilot whale, that contains high concentrations of both total mercury and methylmercury (Julshamn et al., 1989).
In conclusion, my opinion is that while this ‘cultural tradition’ may seem important to some, the Faroe Islands are a territory of Denmark, a region that holds one of the highest standards of living in Europe, and while there is a ban on whaling in these waters, this hunt skirts the International Whaling Commission’s loophole allowing for the “subsistence hunting of small cetaceans”. Many years ago, prior to today’s technology, it was likely necessary to hunt whale in the Faroes to feed one’s family, however, in this day and age, it is no longer a necessity, and thus for scientific reasons (stated above), should not continue because its “sustainability” has not been demonstrated. This is symptomatic of the IWC’s ‘Revised Management Procedure’ (RMP) “built on a mixture of assumptions and facts about whale populations” (The Humane Society of the United States, 2015), which supports my notion that proper data is lacking to declare the Faroe Islands Pilot Whale Hunt as “sustainable” practice.
References:
Berta, A., Sumich, J. L., & Kovacs, K. M. (2015). Marine Mammals Evolutionary Biology (3rd ed., pp. 612-618). Boston, MA: Elsevier.
Caurant, F., & Amiard-Triquet, C. (1995). Cadmium contamination in pilot whales Globicephala melas: source and potential hazard to the species. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 30(3), 207-210.
Fahlman, A., Tyack, P. L., Miller, P. J., & Kvadsheim, P. H. (2014). How man-made interference might cause gas bubble emboli in deep diving whales. Frontiers in physiology, 5.
Fielding, R. (2010). Environmental change as a threat to the pilot whale hunt in the Faroe Islands. Polar Research, 29(3), 430-438.
Julshamn, K., Andersen, K. J., Svendsen, E., Ringdal, O., & Egholm, M. (1989). Trace elements intake in the Faroe islands III. Element concentrations in human organs in populations from Bergen (Norway) and the Faroe islands. Science of the total environment, 84, 25-33.
Le Boeuf, B.J., Pérez-Cortés, H.M., Urbán, J.R., Mate, B.R. & Ollervides, F.U. (2000). High gray whale mortality and low recruitment in 1999: potential causes and implications. J. Cetacean Res. Manage. 2(2), 85-99
Lockyer, C. (2007). All creatures great and smaller: a study in cetacean life history energetics. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 87(04), 1035-1045.
Moore, S. E., Grebmeier, J. M., & Davies, J. R. (2003). Gray whale distribution relative to forage habitat in the northern Bering Sea: current conditions and retrospective summary. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 81(4), 734-742.
Nielsen, J. B., Nielsen, F., Jørgensen, P. J., & Grandjean, P. (2000). Toxic metals and selenium in blood from pilot whales (Globicephala melas) and sperm whales (Physeter catodon). Marine Pollution Bulletin, 40(4), 348-351.
Taylor, B.L., Baird, R., Barlow, J., Dawson, S.M., Ford, J., Mead, J.G., Notarbartolo di Sciara, G., Wade, P. & Pitman, R.L. (2008). Globicephala melas. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2008: e.T9250A12975001. Retrieved November 23, 2015, from http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/9250/0
The Humane Society of the United States. (2015). The Revised Management Procedure and Revised Management Scheme. In Humane Society International. Retrieved November 24, 2015, from http://www.hsi.org/assets/pdfs/SWNW_revised_management_procedure.pdf
First, the population data that this ‘sustainable hunt’ is based upon is information from nearly 27 years ago (estimating 778,000 in 1989). This lack of current data is reflected in their status on the IUCN’s ‘Red List’: "Data Deficient". In addition, other subpopulations in the North and Baltic Seas are already listed in Appendix II – Migratory Species requiring international cooperation by ‘The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals’ (CMS or the Bonn Convention) whose purpose is to conserve terrestrial, marine and avian migratory species throughout their range, and is an intergovernmental treaty under the ‘United Nations Environment Programme’. In fact, regarding long-finned populations around the Faroes, Taylor et al. (2008) state: “recent data on movements in the northwest and northeast Atlantic suggest that these subpopulations should also be included in Appendix II of CMS.” In addition, there is evidence that long-finned pilot whales may actually comprise two or more species, and if this designation is made, the classification of new species will likely change, warranting re-listing under higher categories of risk (Taylor et al., 2008).
Second, in terms of biology (life-history traits), long-finned pilot whales have the potential to be a species at risk. They are a ‘K-selected’ species that have a slow growth rate to maturity and only a single offspring, which make them more susceptible to population declines and recovery difficult. Females do not reach maturity until approx. 8 years and males at approx. 12 years. They have one of the longest birth intervals of all cetaceans, calving only once every 3-5 years, with a gestation lasting 12–16 months. Nursing in pilot whales can continue for many years, and females other than the biological mother can offer to suckle calves (Lockyer, 2007). When a Faroes kill takes place, the entire pod composed of generations is slaughtered, eliminating the possibility of any recruitment from that pod and its gene flow to other pods is terminated.
Third, long term effects of climate change remain unknown, but likely will have an effect on prey availability. We have seen an example of this hypothesis in Pacific migratory whales (gray whales) in strandings along the U.S. Pacific coast due to starvation as prey availability (krill) has been affected by climate change (Le Boeuf et al., 2000; Moore, Grebmeier & Davies, 2003) and range changes occurring. Anthropogenic activities such as continued overfishing and the susceptibility of cetaceans to fisheries bycatch and entanglement in lines remains a severe problem (Berta et al., 2015) contributing to declines. As the human population increases, fisheries will increase needed food production, in turn, increasing bycatch. Another threat that can cause widespread declines is high levels of anthropogenic sound, especially military sonar and seismic surveys. Fahlman et al. (2014) showed that deep-diving whales, such as long-finned pilot whales are particularly susceptible to gas bubble emboli (DCS) caused from anthropogenic sound.
Lastly, the risk to human-health due to increasing toxicity levels in the tissues of long-finned pilot whales around the Faroe Islands will make it a non-sustainable food source. The issue of environmental pollutants remains and is the leading threat to the grindadráp (Fielding, 2010). Mercury, lead, cadmium and selenium were measured in blood from pilot whales caught at the Faroe Islands and concentrations exceeded levels associated with severe toxicity in several other mammal species (Nielsen et al., 2000). Caurant and Amiard-Triquet (1995) examined cadmium concentrations in pilot whales around the Faroe Islands and both blood and urine showed higher than minimum adverse-effect levels established for human beings. While the whales themselves show a resistance to metallic pollutants which allows for their survival, upon examination of organs from human bodies from Faroe Islanders, the high concentrations of mercury was reflected from the intake of pilot whale, that contains high concentrations of both total mercury and methylmercury (Julshamn et al., 1989).
In conclusion, my opinion is that while this ‘cultural tradition’ may seem important to some, the Faroe Islands are a territory of Denmark, a region that holds one of the highest standards of living in Europe, and while there is a ban on whaling in these waters, this hunt skirts the International Whaling Commission’s loophole allowing for the “subsistence hunting of small cetaceans”. Many years ago, prior to today’s technology, it was likely necessary to hunt whale in the Faroes to feed one’s family, however, in this day and age, it is no longer a necessity, and thus for scientific reasons (stated above), should not continue because its “sustainability” has not been demonstrated. This is symptomatic of the IWC’s ‘Revised Management Procedure’ (RMP) “built on a mixture of assumptions and facts about whale populations” (The Humane Society of the United States, 2015), which supports my notion that proper data is lacking to declare the Faroe Islands Pilot Whale Hunt as “sustainable” practice.
References:
Berta, A., Sumich, J. L., & Kovacs, K. M. (2015). Marine Mammals Evolutionary Biology (3rd ed., pp. 612-618). Boston, MA: Elsevier.
Caurant, F., & Amiard-Triquet, C. (1995). Cadmium contamination in pilot whales Globicephala melas: source and potential hazard to the species. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 30(3), 207-210.
Fahlman, A., Tyack, P. L., Miller, P. J., & Kvadsheim, P. H. (2014). How man-made interference might cause gas bubble emboli in deep diving whales. Frontiers in physiology, 5.
Fielding, R. (2010). Environmental change as a threat to the pilot whale hunt in the Faroe Islands. Polar Research, 29(3), 430-438.
Julshamn, K., Andersen, K. J., Svendsen, E., Ringdal, O., & Egholm, M. (1989). Trace elements intake in the Faroe islands III. Element concentrations in human organs in populations from Bergen (Norway) and the Faroe islands. Science of the total environment, 84, 25-33.
Le Boeuf, B.J., Pérez-Cortés, H.M., Urbán, J.R., Mate, B.R. & Ollervides, F.U. (2000). High gray whale mortality and low recruitment in 1999: potential causes and implications. J. Cetacean Res. Manage. 2(2), 85-99
Lockyer, C. (2007). All creatures great and smaller: a study in cetacean life history energetics. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 87(04), 1035-1045.
Moore, S. E., Grebmeier, J. M., & Davies, J. R. (2003). Gray whale distribution relative to forage habitat in the northern Bering Sea: current conditions and retrospective summary. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 81(4), 734-742.
Nielsen, J. B., Nielsen, F., Jørgensen, P. J., & Grandjean, P. (2000). Toxic metals and selenium in blood from pilot whales (Globicephala melas) and sperm whales (Physeter catodon). Marine Pollution Bulletin, 40(4), 348-351.
Taylor, B.L., Baird, R., Barlow, J., Dawson, S.M., Ford, J., Mead, J.G., Notarbartolo di Sciara, G., Wade, P. & Pitman, R.L. (2008). Globicephala melas. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2008: e.T9250A12975001. Retrieved November 23, 2015, from http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/9250/0
The Humane Society of the United States. (2015). The Revised Management Procedure and Revised Management Scheme. In Humane Society International. Retrieved November 24, 2015, from http://www.hsi.org/assets/pdfs/SWNW_revised_management_procedure.pdf