Faroese doctor Pal Wiehe heads the department of Occupational Medicine and Public Health in Torshavn, and has been approaching the Faroese pilot whale hunt from a different perspective. Pilot whales are toothed whales, and feed on squid and fish species that are higher in the food chain. Due in part to bioaccumulation, that means in the present day they contain high levels of mercury. Dr. Wiehe has been studying mercury levels in Faroese families, focusing especially on newborns and monitoring them as they grow up.
Aside from the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Environmental Program created an international Minamata treaty in 2013 to control the anthropogenic release of mercury. Wiehe has been an active contributor to the research, and as his patients, the Faroese people have begun to listen.
Pilot whale populations in the North Atlantic are estimated to be between 300,000 and 500,000, and researchers claim that based purely on the average annual catch of around 600, the hunt is sustainable. Efforts by foreign organizations to tell the country to stop a 1000 year old tradition has not gone over well. In 2014, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society brought Pamela Anderson on board and sailed to the Faroe Islands for a campaign to stop the whale hunt. Wiehe and others believe that it may have united Faroese against foreign attacks, and strengthened the hunt.
The broader issue is that the levels of mercury in pilot whales are a perfect and nightmarish example of the direct effects of international contributions to marine contaminants. Pilot whales are a canary in the coal mine for international mercury regulation, and the remote communities of the Faroe Islands serve as examples of the direct, concentrated effects that distant contamination can have on our own communities.
"Whales or fat and polar bears and caribou in North America, those are signifying--defining parts of what it means to be an indigenous person so, but if it's contaminated by, you know, industrial man, emitting this stuff, it's essentially waste that is shunted onto somebody else's plate, and that's...Almost a human rights issue."
- Pete Ewins, WWF Canada