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Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

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Re: Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

#51

Post by Grustaf »

mcculley wrote: post #47
Grustaf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farming animals is much much worse than killing wild animals. Even when I was a vegetarian for ethical reasons I would eat game, I have no moral objections at all to going out in the forest and shooting a deer for food, but raising pigs in meat factories is horrible.

I am also against factory farming. That is orthogonal to the argument about there being plenty of pigs/dolphins.

You said "but we're not farming dolphins". My point is that hunting dolphins is better than farming them, not worse.

Re: Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

#52

Post by musha68k »

Grustaf wrote: post #37
mcculley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make some sense if we were farming dolphin. Pigs are not endangered.

Farming animals is much much worse than killing wild animals. Even when I was a vegetarian for ethical reasons I would eat game, I have no moral objections at all to going out in the forest and shooting a deer for food, but raising pigs in meat factories is horrible.

I agree factory farming is terrible but this wasteful and gruesome killing is also terrible.

Definition of vegetarian diet might be a bit stretched here.

Either way you don’t condone killing all deer in a certain forest, do you? So much “game” that there won’t be any one healthy animal left?

Re: Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

#53

Post by mcculley »

Grustaf wrote: post #51
mcculley wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also against factory farming. That is orthogonal to the argument about there being plenty of pigs/dolphins.

You said "but we're not farming dolphins". My point is that hunting dolphins is better than farming them, not worse.

I agree that hunting is better than farming, generally. (Not in all scenarios. I would not want to be hunted to exhaustion over a long period of suffering.)

We are farming pigs and guaranteeing a supply. We are not farming dolphins. There will eventually be as many as mammoths.

Re: Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

#54

Post by musha68k »

docdeek wrote: post #13
mcculley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make some sense if we were farming dolphin. Pigs are not endangered.

Are 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

Endangered or not, cetacean intelligence is likely on par with ours. As we get more and more certain that this is the case there will also be increasingly more moral implications here.

I’m not saying that a pig in comparison has less worth by the way. Quite the contrary.

Re: Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

#55

Post by Leherenn »

bell-cot wrote: post #42
c54 wrote: post #12

Funny 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.

"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.

I 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.

Re: Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

#56

Post by pvaldes »

Grustaf wrote: post #6
blunte wrote: post #4

The "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 shoul…

Well, 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?

> what is really the problem?

Just to add context: A common dolphin weights around 150 Kg, a bottlenose dolphin around 400 Kg. Most of those dolphins are pilot whales, that are technically dolphins but bigger. More close to orcas than to dolphins. A male pilot whale can weight between 800 and 3500 Kg. We are talking about millions of Kg of biomass extracted from the sea.

They have also complex societies; so is not just "we killed one animal". If you kill the grandmas the entire herd suffer [1]

And pilot whales eat mainly deep water squids, soaked in ammonia and unedible for us, so...

less pilot whales => more unedible squids alive that compete with => edible fishes so we have => worse fisheries and less money in hands of the fishermen

This animals have an economic value also when alive. You can hunt each one one time... or could fill a boat with tourists willing to pay to see it, and repeat the process from the next fourty years, that is what they do in Canary Islands:

https://www.freebirdone.com/details/short-finned-pilot-whale...

So, maybe Faroese are not so smart as they think.

[1] Most animals don't have grandmas and grandpas. Normally post reproductive animals are useless for the species and are killed fast in nature. This is not the case in an exclusive club that includes us, elephants and many dolphins including pilot whales. They have a important role in the education and care of the baby whales while they parents hunt in deep waters. They keep the maps of the ocean and lead the group also so they live long past their reproductive age.

Re: Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

#58

Post by pvaldes »

bryan0 wrote: post #11
mcculley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make some sense if we were farming dolphin. Pigs are not endangered.

Neither 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

White-sided are not common dolphins

Re: Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

#59

Post by pvaldes »

docdeek wrote: post #13
mcculley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make some sense if we were farming dolphin. Pigs are not endangered.

Are 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

They are very pelagic and don't get close to the coast, so difficult to study. I had seen two in my life.

Re: Faroe Islands: Anger over killing of 1,400 dolphins in one day

#60

Post by smabie »

goohle wrote: post #21
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

Dolphins 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-recogn...

According to India maybe? Almost everyone would call dolphins "animals"
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