Pammy’s here to harass whalers in
Faroes baywatch
Article appearing in the Sunday Times, August 3rd, 2014 by Josh
Glancey. It is in reference to Sea Shepherd in the Faroe Islands:
Pammy’s here to harass whalers in Faroes baywatch
The US actress is part of a group that tries to stop the
Faroese carrying out their annual cull. Josh Glancy joins them on a
stomach-churning rescue mission
PAMELA ANDERSON is angry. Furious in fact. Her rage has
brought her and her private jet all the way from sun-drenched California to the
perma-fog drizzle of the Faroe Islands, about halfway between Scotland and
Iceland.
The former Baywatch star and teen fantasy is here to lend
her support to Operation GrindStop, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s
campaign to stop the annual Faroese hunting of pilot whales, known as the grind
(pronounced “grinned”).
The hunt has been a feature of Faroese life for 500 years.
Each summer, pods of pilot whales are herded from the Atlantic into the fjords
and up to the “killing beaches”, where local men and boys wait with specially
designed knives to cut their spinal cords and turn the water red with blood. A
tradition ingrained in the culture of the land, it is done for sport and skill,
but also for consumption — the whale meat is dried, cooked and eaten.
“This is a brutal and barbaric act done for entertainment,”
says Anderson. She calls the spectacle a “psychotic image that doesn’t teach
our children anything — it’s uncivilised. We can make a difference by bringing
so much attention to this tradition that people will make the change. It has
been done before — as with burning women at the stake.”
Anderson’s eco-warriors versus the islands’ whalers is an
extraordinary clash of cultures: a battle between two groups at the opposite
ends of western civilisation.
Sea Shepherd, which was formed in America in 1981, says it
uses “direct action” to protect marine ecosystems, habitats and species. Its
activists tend, like Anderson, to have grown up in places of ease and plenty,
sunshine and supermarkets, before deciding that they need to shoulder the
world’s burdens. There is a rootlessness about them.
The Faroese, on the other hand, know exactly where they
belong. They have been living on this frigid but achingly beautiful archipelago
in the far north of the Atlantic for more than a millennium.
The country of 50,000 people, which belongs to Denmark but
essentially governs itself, is a treeless tundra and does not support farming
other than of fish and some hardy free-range sheep. It rains up to 300 days a
year and the average August temperature is just 11C.
In winter the waves can rage 40ft high, so for centuries the
islanders survived the dark months almost exclusively on whale meat and
schnapps. The sea gives them sustenance and employment, but also makes their
lives hard and dangerous.
Anderson says she is “more of an activist than an artist”
these days. But is she really the right person to persuade this fierce, proud
and stubborn fishing nation that they should give up one of their oldest
traditions?
“Coming from someone like me — well, no one wants to hear my
input when it comes to these things,” she says, frankly. “But I feel that in
this day and age of celebrity I have to speak.”
Anderson knows exactly why she has been roped into this
campaign, and she isn’t afraid to say it. “In my position in life I’ve been
able to meet a lot of men. I’ve been in a position where I have had some
influence over them. I have an opportunity to make a difference, and so I have
to.”
Many Faroese are furious at what they see as a foreign
attack on their culture. They point out that the pilot whale is not an
endangered species.
In an average year the grind will claim the lives of some
800 whales, a sustainable figure in the context of a total population of
800,000. This is a much better fishing ratio than that of the assaults on cod
and tuna stocks in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
The Sea Shepherd campaign takes its toll, though. It makes
finding and driving the whales difficult, and generates international
opprobrium towards a country about which people know little else. The islanders
don’t like being portrayed as Viking savages.
Most young people in the Faroes aren’t even that interested
in whale meat any more. Because of ocean pollution, levels of mercury in the
meat are so high that local doctors advise that it should be eaten only once a
month, and not at all by pregnant women.
“Lots of us don’t eat much whale meat,” says Trondur
Dalsgaro, a 28-year-old photographer from Torshavn. “But we have a stubborn
streak from living out here in the ocean for all these years.
“We don’t necessarily want to eat the whale so much any
more, but we don’t like being told what to do, particularly by Pamela
Anderson.”
Still, last week during Olavsoka, the country’s biggest
annual festival, which commemorates the death of Saint Olaf in 1030, there was
plenty of whale meat on display for the special occasion.
The entire country embarked on a mammoth boozing session,
and after midnight on the second day linked arms in their thousands for a chain
dance and to sing an ancient ballad about love, whaling and island life.
At each house that I visited, I was welcomed with a glass of
schnapps and a whale-meat platter. It is thick and meaty, and tastes of the
deep, salty ocean. The blubber is slimy, chewy and rather difficult to keep
down.
“If we don’t stop the pollution, the grind may die out,”
said Hans Hermanson, a veteran whaler. “The main question is: how will it
happen? Is it because Big Brother Sea Shepherd is watching us and telling us?
Or will we be allowed to live as we have done for many years, adapting to
modern civilisation slowly?”
This is Sea Shepherd’s fifth campaign on the islands, the
first having taken place in 1985. The activists haven’t stopped the grind yet,
but between them and the mercury poisoning it does feel as if its days may
finally be numbered.
Operation GrindStop is their biggest Faroes campaign to
date, and will see 500 volunteers coming to the islands over the summer to
fight the whale slaughter. Sea Shepherd is well funded and has developed
sophisticated tactics. It has a large land force of spotters dotted around the
island, searching for whales or any signs of unusual fishing activity in the
bays and fjords. Activists use a drone to cover some of the impassable terrain
on the islands, and they claim to have a mole in the Faroese whaling community
who feeds them information about the hunts.
Their elite force is at sea, where a command boat and four
speedboats comb the coastal waters for whales, which they try to drive off
using whale irritants such as bad underwater music. If they interrupt a whale
drive in progress, they try to interfere with it, although at this point
they’re entering rather murky legal waters.
Recognisable by the skull and crossbones-like logo
emblazoned on their hoodies, Sea Shepherd members are not famed for moderation.
The organisation’s charismatic founder, Paul Watson, who broke away from
Greenpeace and has twice been the target of an Interpol “red notice” requesting
his arrest, once reportedly drew a comparison between Faroese whaling and
Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer. He also suggested Japan’s 2011 tsunami
was Neptune’s retribution for its annual dolphin slaughter.
Many volunteers have devoted their entire lives to the
movement. Each repeats the same mantra: “I’m not here for me. I’m here for the
whales.”
“I would give up family, friends, girlfriends for this,”
said Guilherme Pira, a 27-year-old volunteer from Rio de Janeiro, who gave up a
career as a graphic designer to join the movement. “I’m saving lives — there is
nothing more important than life.”
The days spent scouring the seas for whales to save are long
and dreary. They are followed by a quick debrief, a Quorn burger and an early
night. “There is no time for fun,” says Pira. “This is a campaign.”
For now at least, the campaign seems to be working. Since
they arrived in June there has not been a killing, as in 2011, when their
“Ferocious Isles” campaign helped to ensure a grind-free summer.
Although the whales are not endangered, the activists
believe they should be given protection to ensure they do not become so. But
ultimately their appeal against the grind is an emotional one. “Whales are
graceful, intelligent, socially complex animals,” says Lamya Essemlali, head of
the Sea Shepherd offshore operation. “To kill them in this way for a psychotic,
almost sexual pleasure is not acceptable.”
My conversation with Essemlali is cut short when she
receives news of a pod of whales being tracked close to the shore on the other
side of the islands. We pile into a four-wheel-drive car and hurtle at
terrifying speed through pounding rain to get to the action along the narrow
and winding island roads.
The conditions are so appalling that the Faroese have
decided the seas are too rough to attempt a grind. But Essemlali and her boat
crew are determined to drive the whales out to sea anyway, to ensure their safety.
So we jump on board two tiny aluminium speedboats and hurtle
through the seething fjords to find the whales. We do, eventually, and they
decide to push out to sea, perhaps irritated by our buzzing boats, or maybe
just bored with playing in the fjords. We can now go back to shore.
I stagger back onto land and discreetly vomit behind a shed.
The Sea Shepherds are all hugging and crying. Here, on a lonely Nordic pier out
in the deep ocean in a full-blown Atlantic storm, this motley collection of
international misfits have won a victory.
“They may try again tomorrow,” says Essemlali. “So we will
be back at 6am. Every day that we need to, we will be back.”
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