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Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day
- blunte 5y agoThe "part of our cultural heritage" excuse is not a positive argument, as many cultures have some pretty horrible practices in their heritage. In fact, some cultures were successful colonists. Should they be allowed to capture the Faroe islands and enslave the locals under the guise of "cultural heritage"? Times change, and human society on the whole must change. Cultures that refuse to change can and sometimes should be cut off from the rest of society. How well would they handle being isolated by the rest of the world, with no commerce or outside support? I suspect they would suddenly decide to leave some practices in the past.
- kspacewalk2 5y agoI agree with the argument you're making, but not with your colonist example. Dolphins, after all, are animals, not people. "Cultural heritage" argument is in a league of its own when it comes to harming humans.
- jnwatson 5y agoWe do indeed make exceptions for humans. We frequently ignore issues like child marriage. Widespread pederasty was ignored in Afghanistan for respect of their culture. Even in the “Western” world the lack of statutory rape law in France (just changed this year) was mostly ignored because it was just considered part of French culture.
- goohle 5y agoDolphins are "non-human person". We have no specialized word for creatures like dolphins, but they are not "animals", they are "persons". https://www.giveindia.org/blog/four-reasons-why-india-recognises-dolphins-as-non-human-persons/ https://www.giveindia.org/blog/four-reasons-why-india-recogn...
- tasoga 5y agoWell that's just your cultural upbringing. Maybe my cultural heritage involves cannibalism, after all, humans are just meat as well
- blunte 5y agoEven so, it's one thing to eat a human who has died naturally or by accident vs chasing down and killing another human to eat them.
- toss1 5y agoYes they are "animals". So are we. Our intelligence is not much superior to theirs (it's arguable that only the lack of opposable thumbs prevents them from getting on the ladder of developing technology — they already use tools), and they experience the full range of emotions as we do. How would you feel as your entire clan was herded into a box canyon and slaughtered with knives, as you wade through their blood awaiting your knife? The "Cultural Heritage" argument is indeed nothing more than an utter bulls*hit excuse when it comes to such barbaric practices. By the same token, we could justify punishment of being tarred, feathered, drawn and quartered in the town square. I'm not sure it will be in our lifetime, but I fully expect that eventually all eating of killed meat (vs cultured/lab-grown meat) will be seen as barbaric as other barbaric middle ages practices, and as slavery.
- dunefox 5y ago.
- toss1 5y agoA claim that it is "preposterous" is itself preposterous and works only if you are ignorant. Dolphins have language, complex society & culture, self-awareness, use tools, use names for themselves & each other, have higher brain/body-mass ratio vs humans, invent games, act ethically, cooperate across species, and that's just the start of the list when we're only just starting to research the topic. With all of those components of intelligence (and some features even more advanced vs human capabilities), it should not take much intelligence to see how having opposable thumbs and the ability to write and build on information is a very small step in terms of actual intelligence, BUT that this yields massive visible differences in abilities to change one's environment. (It's still to be seen if this is an actual survival advantage - the Great Filter may still be ahead of us, and be accidental suicide by technology misapplication). Also, claiming that a single point "invalidates" all other arguments commits a number of fallacies, including Overgeneralization, Non-Sequitor, and Argument from Incredulity... If you want to feel like it's OK to kill and promote killing of other species for no good reason, it'd be better to just own it than to attempt justifying it with dismissive displays of ignorance.
- Grustaf 5y agoWell, every year in the US 121 million pigs are slaughtered, and they obviously live under much worse conditions. The Faroe Islands have 50000 inhabitants, so even if they did this every year it wouldn't really be very significant. It looks graphical, but if they eat them, which I understand that they do, what is really the problem?
- mcculley 5y agoThis would make some sense if we were farming dolphin. Pigs are not endangered.
- bryan0 5y agoNeither are Atlantic white-sided dolphins[0]. It does seem weird to me that people would get upset over this but not our own slaughter of hundreds of millions of animals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_white-sided_dolphin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_white-sided_dolphin
- jnwatson 5y agoThe general argument is that cetaceans are smart and are worthy of more protection. At the same time, pigs can be pretty smart. Too bad they are made of bacon.
- mcculley 5y agohttps://hwdt.org/atlantic-white-sided-dolphin https://hwdt.org/atlantic-white-sided-dolphin says there are only 300,000 of them. Killing 1,400 at a time seems like an easy way to endanger the species.
- pvaldes 5y agoWhite-sided are not common dolphins
- docdeek 5y agoAre the white-sided dolphins that are at issue here endangered? Wikipedia says they aren’t, ranked as ‘Of Least Concern’ on the conservation scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_white-sided_dolphin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_white-sided_dolphin
- throwaway59553 5y ago>In fact, some cultures were successful colonists. And those cultures are very proud to have been more technological advanced than the colonized and had the vision to conquer and spread civilization. I'd google for "Black Legend" if I were you. >I suspect they would suddenly decide to leave some practices in the past. That's very naive, you just have to look around a bit to see that many cultures don't really care if some people in other parts of the world find them outdated.
- okokwhatever 5y agoThis comment of you indicates a lack of knowledge on so many things and it predicates the marketing campaigns we've been suffering for centuries. It would be better to educate yourself about history and the relations between colonialist empires before trying to sound smart.
- adzm 5y agoAdditionally they are using modern boats and technology; that is much different.
- mc32 5y agoLots of cultures are allowed quotas by their governments to harvest resources other people aren’t allowed. One such is the annual Taiji dolphin catch in Japan[1]. But native Alaskans and Canadians have certain rights too. As long as they don’t contribute to extinction this is better than modern animal husbandry such as veal. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiji_dolphin_drive_hunt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiji_dolphin_drive_hunt
- soco 5y agoThe quota was 200 and they slaughtered 1400 then said oopsadaisy.
- lbriner 5y agoI'm not particularly into animal rights but this does seem gratuitous to catch them in such large numbers with no-one making sure that enough have been caught. How many will definitely become food and how many will spoil/get discarded. I guess a similar issue already exists with commercial fishing and the 1000s of animals killed as collatoral, except Dolphins being larger and more intelligent does seem much worse.
- stevespang 5y agoMay Covid decimate the killers of dolphins in the faroe islands, fair dinkum. Dolphins are air breathing mammals, our brothers.
- schleck8 5y agoSounds like quite the barbarian 'culture'. Killing animals for food is one thing, doing it as a hobby for fun is incredibly weird. You can't even eat them i think, so they died for absolutely no reason.
- ftyers 5y ago> The carcases were pulled ashore and distributed to locals for consumption.
- schleck8 5y ago> Dolphin meat is high in mercury, and may pose a health danger to humans when consumed. You can only eat it in small quantities https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_mammals_as_food https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_mammals_as_food
- falcolas 5y agoPer some of the reports - they got too much. They got more than they can store for consumption. Even the town leaders were apologizing for slaughtering too many.
- Loughla 5y ago>Sounds like quite the barbarian 'culture'. wat You do understand that > Killing animals [. . .] as a hobby [. . .] Is something that happens in most places, right? Hunting exists. It's multi-billion dollar industry. What about hunting defines a culture as barbaric? If it's done within appropriate and ethical legislative or regulatory contexts, and not to endangered or threatened species, what does it matter in defining whether a culture is barbaric or not?
- schleck8 5y agoI do understand it, and i think hunting hobby culture is stupid. That's my personal opinion. Go shoot targets if you want to use a rifle, do another sport if you need exercise. Excluding hunting because of vast overpopulation etc
- hsuduebc2 5y agoI find hard to believe that you accidentally murder at least 1400 dolphings while thinking it's 200 maximum. Ridiculous. Ridiculously cruel.
- hsuduebc2 5y agoThis thing is even more sad if we take in to account that a lot of this corpses are going to just rot.
- c54 5y agoFunny how 'traditional' here is implied to have a positive connotation, as if to say: Well, here are some people who did something we don't like, but it's maybe justified since it was tradition. Tradition need not mean good, this one is clearly barbaric by modern standards.
- bell-cot 5y ago"Traditional hunting" generally implies "competent", "sustainable", and "only enough for the community's own needs". Its sounds like the supposedly trained-and-certified "traditional" hunters here fell far short of such ideals. If one wanted to end this particular tradition, that seems like the best angle to attack it from.
- Leherenn 5y agoI don't know about the other 2, but I wouldn't say sustainable. Humans have been overhunting species for a long while now, from the Ice Age megafauna, to lions in Europe in Antiquity and the Dodo a few centuries ago, and plenty of species currently. If anything, sustainability is a pretty new concept.
- MattGaiser 5y agoIs it that they take one pod a year? Is that why so many?
- el_oni 5y agoFrom what I understand they organise the hunts when a pod of cetaceans is spotted off the coast. Rather than sending fishing fleets out, they corral them into a fjord and slaughter them on the beach. In some ways this is better than fishing fleets, there is no bycatch and they aren't trawling or reducing stocks. But there is also an international ban on whaling, and they are part of the EU which also has a ban. In this case it was just that the pod was much larger than normally finds its way to the isles
- silicon2401 5y ago"Outlaw Ocean" is a great book about atrocities and crimes that occur constantly at sea, like this story.
- vizzah 5y agoFucking humans.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoWell said. I'm sure the dolphins thought so as well.
- ikerdanzel 5y agoThis will only get bigger as in more slaughter. Anger my ass. No action, talk only....reminds me of certain EU organizations that has become the butt jokes of many. Identify the killer. Dox them. Change the law. Otherwise it is just another news for the day. Tomorrow is other "anger" protest with.
- pvaldes 5y ago> Sorry we killed too much, ops, our mistake... 53 protected cetaceans more were killed this week