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

Post by Grustaf » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

mcculley wrote: post #49

docdeek wrote: post #13

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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

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.

Post by musha68k » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 12:43 AM UTC

Grustaf wrote: post #63

musha68k wrote: post #52

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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?

Of course not, but I don't think that is what happened here. And I am not sure it's wasteful, if they eat all the meat the will eat less of other meats. Gruesome for sure, but not more gruesome than a slaughterhouse.

Post by pvaldes » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 7:26 AM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #56

Grustaf wrote: post #6

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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 ju…

Post by Grustaf » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 7:52 AM UTC

musha68k wrote: post #64

Grustaf wrote: post #63

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Of course not, but I don't think that is what happened here. And I am not sure it's wasteful, if they eat all the meat the will eat less of other meats. Gruesome for sure, but not more gruesome than a slaughterhouse.

Did you read the article? They have to throw lots of those carcasses into landfills as they are running out of ways to handle, store and consume that much meat.

Post by pvaldes » Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

Grustaf wrote: post #67

solarengineer wrote: post #65

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They no longer need to hunt dolphins for food. In fact, it is now a sport activity carried out when someone spurs Dolphins and an adhoc hunt is carried out. Could you elaborate on the perspective that you suggest we should have? I am curious since these are sentient creatures with complex social structures that we are talking about here.

Of course they don’t “have to” hunt, they could just buy factory meat like everyone else. But hunting is of course much more humane than meat factories. I don’t think there is anything wrong with killing animals per se, but animals farmed for meat live awful lives, hunted animals don’t.