Sea Shepherd and Wick, Scotland, protest against Faroe Islands whale killings

The Guardian reports, 25th August 2015: Denmark’s autonomous Faroe Islands has announced that they had refused entry to a ship carrying 21 activists from the militant conservation group Sea Shepherd who were trying to disrupt traditional whale hunts.

The territory’s government said in a statement that it had barred the ship, the Bob Barker, “with a basis in immigration legislation and in the interests of maintaining law and order”.

“In recent weeks, anti-whaling activists representing the animal rights group Sea Shepherd have deliberately attempted to disrupt the legal and regulated activity of driving and killing pilot whales for food in the Faroe Islands, leading to the arrest, prosecution and expulsion from the Faroe Islands of a number of these activists,” the statement added.

Tensions have been high between those who defend the traditional whale hunt, and animal rights activists who say the practice causes unnecessary bloodshed.

Source: The Guardian. For the full text, see www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/25/sea-shepherd-anti-whaling-ship-bob-barker-refused-entry-to-faroe-islands

 

The Guardian also reports, 21st August 2015: A Scottish town has broken off its relations with the Faroe Islands in protest against this year’s “disgusting” killing of over 400 pilot whales.

Wick, a coastal in the far north of Scotland closer to the Faroes than to London, has been twinned for 20 years with Klaksvík, the second-largest community in the Faroes. But the islanders’ traditional whale hunts have sickened civic leaders who fear that their association with the remote archipelago could also affect their own tourism.

Caithness SNP civic leader councillor Gail Ross and two colleagues have written to Jógvan Skorheim, mayor of Klaksvík, to say the traditional whale hunts were not something that her town “should be associated with”.

Source: The Guardian. For the full story, see www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/21/scottish-town-cuts-twinned-link-to-faroe-islands-over-whale-killings

 

Marinet observes: It is no longer necessary for the Faroe Islands to kill whales for economic reasons i.e. essential food for the islanders. In the case of Monterey Bay, USA, once a centre of whaling in the 20th century, the value of the “tourist” industry created today by people coming to see the whales gather in the autumn is now in excess of $2 billion annually — far greater (after adjustments) than the annual revenue ever generated by the whaling industry. Is it not time of the Faroe islanders to think along similar lines?


Please do share this

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Delicious
  • StumbleUpon
  • Add to favorites
  • Email
  • RSS