A WARRINGTON man is to travel to the Faroe Islands with conservation charity Sea Shepherd to play a part in their campaign to stop the annual slaughter of pilot whales.
Builder Tony Land, from Lymm, has paid out some £1,500 of his own money to take part in the trip which will see Sea Shepherd supporters using small boats to try and stop what the people of The Faroes call “The Grind” but which conservationists say is nothing more than the slaughter of an endangered species.
Every year, some 1,000 long-finned pilot whales are slaughtered during the Grind, with islanders using small boats to drive the whales ashore where they are killed.
The majority of North Atlantic cetaceans – whales, dolphins, porpoises, etc – give birth to their calves in the warm waters of the equator before migrating passed the Faroe Islands to feed in the nutrient rich waters of Svalbard and the Arctic.
For centuries, the Faroese have used a method of whaling that involves stranding pods of small cetaceans – mainly pilot whales – on certain designated beaches.
Small boats herd the cetaceans towards a low-lying shore where they are washed up. The frightened animals are then killed with a knife, which is used to cut through the veins and arteries that supply blood to the whale’s head. They can take up to four minutes to die.
Those whales that do not get washed ashore have a gaff hook beaten into their blowhole and are then pulled ashore by rope.
The whale meat is divided up among the locals although much of it is simply left to rot on the beach, according to Sea Shepherd.
Tony said: “We say that indiscriminate slaughter like this has no place in modern times. Sea Shepherd has been actively opposing and confronting the Faroese grinds since 1985 and remains one of the most active organisations fighting to save these endangered whales.”
Tony will be off to the Faroes on June 19 and early next year he plans to join Sea Shepherd again – traveling to Japan to try and disrupt the annual dolphin slaughter at Taiji.
Unlike some other conservation organisations, Sea Shepherd relies entirely on volunteers to man its boats and on donations to fund their operations.
Pictures: Top: Slaughter on the beach. Right: Tony Land at an anti-whaling demonstration in London.
