Recent Whale Beaching In Australia
Three Beached Whales, a 1577 engraving by Dutch artist Jan Wierix, depicts stranded Sperm whales.
Stranded whale at Katwijk in Holland in 1598.
At least 2000 whales per year die after beaching themselves, and while there are many potentially modern explanations for this, including sonar and global warming, it’s simply a fact that reports of mass whale beachings go back to antiquity and the pre-industrial era.
So the fact is, whales aren’t going to stop washing up on shore anytime soon.
Now let’s do the math…about 2000 whales wash up on shore each year. This happens mostly, in large groups, to toothed whales, and most scientists believe that the phenomenon poses no threat to any whale population.
The Faroe Islanders kill about 950 pilot whales per year. Whale meat is part of their day to day diet, and this tradition goes back nearly a thousand years.
Iceland plans to kill about 150 minke whales and 150 fin whales this year.
Norway and Japan have established limits of just over 1000 whales each.
But here’s the thing. Fuck Japan and Norway. And, for the most part, fuck Iceland, too. Their commercial (or, in the case of Japan, their “scientific”) whaling industries – which consist of slaughtering large, baleen whales – have nothing to do with subsistence or tradition.
So that leaves plenty of washed up, dead-anyways whales that could be distributed to places like the Faroe Islands and remote parts of Indonesia.
These Faorese could've been put to good use in South Africa this weekend.
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