The three organisations behind the campaign are the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). The object of the campaign is to stop the non-commercial Faroese harvest of pilot whales. The harvest can be traced as far back as the first settlement on the Faroes.
Cheating with Figures
A statement made to the European Parliament Intergroup on Animal Welfare (1993) by Pilot Whale Campaign leader, Gillian Stacey shows that the Pilot Whale Campaign is familiar with the new estimate. “The estimate ... of 778,000 has not yet been discussed in the IWC Sub-committee on Small Cetaceans and is therefore not accepted by the IWC,” writes Stacey.
Greg Donovan, whale researcher and editor of the IWC scientific publications, told the High North News a different story. “The abundance estimate for pilot whales was first presented to the Scientific Committee at its 1992 meeting and discussed by the sub-committee on small cetaceans and the Committee when reviewing the work of that sub-committee. The paper, whose primary author is professor Steve Buckland, was subsequently revised and published in the IWC special issue on the Northern Hemisphere pilot whales,” says Greg Donovan to the High North News.
According to the campaign material, thousands of whales are caught every year. The average catch over the past decade has been 1200 pilot whales. A total of 806 was taken in 1993, less than 0.2 percent of the estimated stock. Faroe Islanders have taken this level of catch on an annual basis and almost continuously since at the year 1600.
Will not Join the Boycott
Sport
“The North Atlantic pilot whales are very numerous, but by cheating with figures, the campaign is trying to make it seem as though they are an endangered species,” says Blichfeldt. In its publications, the IWC Scientific Committee employs a 1992 population estimate for the Central and North East Atlantic pilot whale stocks of 778,000. Despite this, the latest printed information circulated by the campaign claims that “there is no acceptable scientific data on the status of the (pilot whale) stock.” and that “the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee has rejected the Faroese population estimate of 72,000.” This estimate of 72,000 was based on extremely uncertain conditions, but is now quite obsolete after extensive sighting surveys were carried out in the North East Atlantic in 1989. On the basis of these surveys, a group of scientists led by Scottish professor, Steve Buckland, arrived at the present estimate of 778,000.
In the material distributed to the media in March this year, the Pilot Whale Campaign sums up the results of the boycott campaign against Faroese products. They claim that “the Coop has stopped purchasing Faroese fish.” In a letter to the Faroese Solidarity Campaign (Aug. 1993), Martin Henderson, public relations manager of the Cooperative Wholesale Society Limited (Coop) writes that they “will not be joining the Faroese fish boycotts and our position has been made clear to the campaign organisers.” Claims have also been made that “The Asda has stopped purchasing Faroese fish.” “The Asda has not stopped buying Faroese fish,” says the executive director of Faroe Seafood Company in Grimsby to the High North News. He maintains that the same thing is true of the other supermarket chains towards whom the Pilot Whale Campaign claims to have been successful with their boycott message.
“In the Faroe Islands there are two favourite sports - football and killing whales,” writes the EIA in one of their flyers (1993). “An absurd statement,” says Hans Jakob Hermansen, chairman of the Faroese Pilot Whalers Association, to the High North News. “Now as always, the whales are hunted for food. Both the blubber and the meat are eaten and constitute an essential part of the meat in Faroese households. Almost all other meat must be imported. In view of the economic crisis we are experiencing in the Faroes today, the meat constitutes an important supplement to the family economy. But it is also good, traditional food and has an important place in Faroese culture.” The meat is distributed free to those taking part in the hunt, but also to the other households in the villages, in accordance with an old and complicated system.