Sea Shepherds, UK; Preserving Mental Health whilst Preserving Ocean Life
In Conversation with Anna Oliver and Rob Read of Operation Bloody Fjords, Sea Shepherd UK.
Illustrated by Alicia Hayden.
Just 230 miles north of Scotland lie the Faroe Islands, home to a horrific and outdated tradition called the Grindadráp hunts. Approximately 850 pilot whales and dolphins are rounded up and herded into the islands’ harbours every year, where they are dragged ashore and brutally killed – an act that remains legal because the Faroe Islands are independent of the EU, despite being a constituent country of The Kingdom of Denmark.
Sea Shepherd UK has been fighting since the 1980s to bring this barbaric activity to an end. After 2015, Faroese legislation curtailed the activity of Sea Shepherd boats in Faroe Islands’ waters. Now crews attend the hunts on land where they can still record and document the hunts and use the information and footage to grow awareness internationally and put pressure on the Faroese to stop the practice. They call this work Operation Bloody Fjords.
Last month, I spoke to two Sea Shepherd members – Rob Read, Chief Operations Officer, via email, and Anna Oliver, volunteer and trustee, over Zoom.
Read explained that the cetacean meat gets divided up for food for the community and for sale in restaurants and shops although the islands are very well provisioned with goods from all over the world. He said,
‘The Faroe islanders per capita GDP (and lack of poverty) is comparable with any Scandinavian country. In fact the Faroese per capita GDP is higher than in the UK, Japan, New Zealand, France, Sweden, Germany, Canada to name a few. The grindadráp could never be called subsistence whaling...it simply is not needed to feed anyone.’
Just as shocking is that the whale meat is poisoning all who eat it, resident or tourist. Rob pointed out,
‘the Faroese chief medical officers Pál Weihe and Høgni Debes Joensen announced in November 2008 that pilot whale meat and blubber contains too much mercury, PCBs and DDT derivatives to be safe for human consumption.’
** TRIGGER WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGE **
Grindadrap of 23 pilot whales. Photo Credit: Sea Shepherd UK.
By the time I spoke to Anna, I had begun to realise that researching this subject was taking its toll on me. I had underestimated how much I would be disturbed by the details of the hunts. Seeing photographs was bad enough, and I couldn’t bring myself to watch any of the videos, pressing play a couple of times but panicking and turning them off as the scene started to unfold, a feeling of nausea rising in my chest.
But the Sea Shepherd crews witness the killing first-hand and sometimes livestream the footage in order to provoke action from the public.
With this in mind, I was keen to ask Anna how the volunteers cope with seeing such harrowing things and if it affects their mental health.
“It is something that we are wary of and we try to make sure that the volunteers are up to the challenge before they go. We do briefings with them about what might happen, about what they might see and make sure they are okay with that. I mean it’s not fun; it’s pretty horrific. And it’s not like it’s happening a mile away; you’re right next to it, so it is quite traumatic. So yeah, we’re quite careful to make sure our crews are well supported. They tend to support each other when they’re out there and when they come back we try and make sure that they’re accessing anything they might need.
And when I asked about activist burnout, Anna said,
‘We do have long term volunteers and we do see people going through periods where they’re maybe not quite as active or they’ve got other things going on and that’s fine obviously, but I think people tend to be very committed to the cause so they carry on, no matter what’s happening. But it’s definitely an interesting point because I’ve certainly felt it at times, where I’ve thought “Oh, it’s so much work,” and you feel like you’re not getting anywhere. But then something happens and you get a breakthough and you think, “Yeah! That’s what we’re doing it for!”’
I wondered what types of people volunteer for Sea Shepherd.
‘Some of them are students and they’re off for the summer but a lot of our crew members have regular jobs as well and this is them taking annual leave to go and do it because it’s something they’re passionate about. We’ve got people from all walks of life really - NHS and council workers, train drivers. We’ve got a lot of divers that become volunteers.’
‘Rob’s been involved for a long time, he’s one of our founding volunteers who carried on to become an employee and I started volunteering about ten years ago. I’d watched the film The Cove, about the dolphin hunts in Japan and through that [I] became aware of Sea Shepherd’s work.’
Films and video footage were beginning to stand out to me as a crucial method of raising awareness and creating new supporters. Anna also explained that although 2020 was a difficult year in terms of not being able to do the many fundraising events they would normally do, the release of Seaspiracy on Netflix brought a temporary surge in donations which went some way to mitigating the impact of the lockdowns.
It’s a long game but we’re definitely seeing some positive impacts with it. - Anna Oliver
The COVID regulations also prevented the crews from being on the islands for much of the past year, whilst some hunts still went ahead regardless. But the crews are no stranger to frustration and playing the waiting game. Anna said,
‘It’s quite hard work out there. There’s a lot of waiting around for something to happen. The hunts could happen at any time and sometimes there’s one straight after another and other times you could go weeks with nothing happening. One year there were two at exactly the same time in different places and so it’s quite difficult mentally as you’re always on edge. We find out that there’s something going on via the local news website so that is our main goal to keep checking those websites and if something is happening then it’s basically just a case of getting there and being ready for it.’
I had found that talking about the Grindadráp had definitely provoked a pretty high level of eco-anxiety for me. I needed to know if Anna was optimistic about the future of Sea Shepherd’s work.
‘Definitely. And specifically with the Faroes Campaign. I mean that has been ongoing for a long time now, and the Faroese are very set in their ways about it, but we are making headway. We’ve had some positive outcomes especially with the dolphins. So pilot whales are technically dolphins as well but there was a debate in the Faroes a couple of years ago about whether they should stop hunting the smaller dolphins as a result of the impact of our work… and Rob’s just reminded me that they’ve never actually carried out a sustainability study on the dolphin hunts so getting that discussed in their parliament and having some of the grind foremen actually coming out and saying that they don’t think they should be hunting the dolphins, that was a massive step forward. We’ve also got quite a lot of Danish crew that have become involved and they’re spending a lot of time creating links and contacts in the Faroes with people who are against the hunts. So yeah, it’s a long game but we’re definitely seeing some positive impacts with it.’
What would you say to people who are interested in getting involved in front line conservation?
‘I would say just do it really. It’s something that’s really rewarding. I’ve made lifelong friends. I mean I met Rob and now we’ve got a house together and kids. I’ve also made lifelong friends through it. I’ve had some great experiences – I’ve been to Japan, I’ve been to the Faroe Islands and whilst what you’re doing there is not the best thing to be witnessing, there are positives in it as well because you’re getting to see other countries and other cultures. But I would say the main things are it’s really rewarding and the relationships you make along the way are great. The bond that you end up having with somebody after you’ve witnessed these sorts of things together is really strong. So yeah, I would say go for it, it’s definitely something that’s worthwhile doing.’
If you would like to support the work of Sea Shepherd UK, there is lots of information on www.seashepherd.org.uk and their Facebook and Instagram pages that you can share.
Donations are always welcome and there are only two members of paid staff, which keeps admin costs low and ensures the majority of donations goes to direct action. Sea Shepherd suggests that not visiting the Faroe Islands and not buying any products sourced from the Faroes can help put international pressure on the Faroese government to bring an end to the grindadráp.
Michelle Parsons
Shell Parsons is an autistic writer, advocate and nature therapy practitioner. She believes that neurodiversity is an essential part of biodiversity. You can find her at shellparsons.com, on Instagram @neurodivergentinnature and as a contributor in The Neurodivergent Collective. She is a cat mum and an actual mum and loves wildlife gardening and nature walks.