| Dan Haar: A CT politician's anti-whaling adventure in the North Atlantic:
David Michel had a decision to make as he stood on the edge of a beach in the Faroe Islands this summer, documenting the tagging of pilot whales by a group of mostly men who slaughter the animals in the North Atlantic territory known for its breathtaking scenery.
Michel is a Connecticut state Representative from Stamford, arguably the General Assembly's most liberal Democrat, and that's saying something. He made the midsummer trip to the Faroes as part of his crusade against animal cruelty, joining forces with the controversial anti-whaling activist Paul Watson.
Back in Connecticut, Michel is talking about ways the state can respond to the Faroe Islands slaughter, known as a grindadrap, or just grind for short (rhymes with wind). Maybe a resolution, a boycott or perhaps even a ban on Faroe Islands farmed salmon, a main export of the Denmark territory between Iceland and Norway.
A Faroes grindadrap can happen spontaneously as the hunters round up pilot whales – a type of dolphin in the whale family, about 12 to 20 feet long – forcing the pods toward the shore by revving their boat engines.
On this early afternoon in July, Michel and his fellow activists from one of Watson's groups, learning of the tagging action through an online network, had come to witness and document it. The plan was not to intervene, which would lead to certain arrest, because this was only a tagging, not a slaughter.
That self-restraint didn't sit well with Michel, a 49-year-old wholesale eyewear distributor who was born in France, came to the United States as a teenager and has retained his native accent. He was inclined to take action. But the group insisted on standing pat for what he called a brutal, 2 1/2-hour tagging operation.
"Knowing myself I think I would have probably gone through the police lines," Michel told me after his return. "I have to admit that the thought did cross my mind because it looked like torture, what they were doing."
The activists believe the tagging was for tracking the dolphins for a later slaughter of a larger pod. "You don’t see tagging like this normally," Michel told me. "Beaching the dolphin and then manhandling the dolphin and then drilling holes in the dorsal fin. That’s not normal tagging, that’s barbaric... I was cursing them out. It was crazy to watch this."
Michel didn't witness a slaughter on his 2-week excursion. One did happen but it was a long ferry ride away and word of it came too late. He's not disappointed, he told me, because a slaughter – as many as 1,500 pilot whales or other types of dolphins at a time – is never a welcome sight.
But he did stand in at a hastily arranged trial for fellow activists from the activists who were charged with trespassing into territorial waters just a few weeks earlier, when they disrupted a grindadrap, saving many pilot whales. The activists, led by Paul Watson, were charged by police on a boat that was participating in the grind, Michel said.
His presence at the trial caused a local stir, as the Faroese took seriously his status as an American elected official. Defenders of the slaughters taunted him on social media.
A hallowed tradition of slaughter
The Faroese grindadrap exists in a sort of legal limbo as Michel and Watson describe it. Most people, even many on the islands, oppose whale hunting and the practice is forbidden under European Union law. But the Faroes have an exemption as a territory, which Watson is fighting. The Faroes' attempt to gain independence complicates the politics of the battle.
Grindadrap is viewed as a hallowed tradition on the islands, passed down through many generations from father to son – "an emotional attachment to cultural heritage," one pro-grind writer called it. Defenders say it's a form of self-sufficiency for the remote islands because they eat the meat – although it's so riddled with mercury that even moderate consumption carries danger.
Defenders also say their killings represent just a tiny fraction of the whales that die each year, many of which become entangled in fishing lines or perish from ingesting plastic. And they say pilot whales are not endangered.
"I think all cetaceans are in danger because of the state of our ocean right now," Watson said in an interview from Paris, where he lives, referring to the oceans in the singlular, as one body of water, the source of life. All whale-killing, he and Michel said, disrupts the balance in ways that are not widely appreciated including the benefits of whale poop in fighting climate change.
Watson, a co-founder of Greenpeace, was kicked out of that organization decades ago and later founded Sea Shepherd, which ousted him last year from several international chapters. The main issue: Watson takes a much more confrontational, no-compromise approach than most environmental and animal rights groups.
Watson now runs the Captain Paul Watson Foundation. Michel leads the New England chapter.
"We do get a lot of volunteers but I wouldn’t say we get a lot of people like David because he’s actually an elected representative in Connecticut. I don’t think we have anybody quite like that," Watson told me.
'We're going to...fill up the jails'
Playing up Michel's role, Watson posted a story on Reddit, "A Connecticut Yankee in a Faroese Court," and later told me he couldn't resist the Mark Twain reference with an elected official who serves in Hartford.
"The people of the Faroe Islands certainly were well aware of that and were concerned, especially when he was wanting to talk to the salmon farms."
Activists want buyers to avoid Faroese farmed salmon, which they say is tainted figuratively and literally by the blood from the grindadraps. No state has taken such an action. Only one U.S. governor has issued a proclamation in support of Watson: You guessed it, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont in 2019, encouraged by Michel.
Days before he arrived on July 14 – Bastille Day, notable for a French native – passengers on a cruise ship in a Faroe Islands harbor witnessed men with knives killing 78 large dolphins, a scene that turned the water blood-red, the New York Post and the Watson foundation reported. Ambassador Cruise Lines issued a public apology, condemning the tradition.
Michel's July trip came ten years after he traveled to Japan to document whale slaughters there. A vegan, he chairs the General Assembly's animal rights caucus. Looking ahead, he's not sure what he might propose in the 2024 session of the General Assembly but he aims to return to the Faroes.
Watson is eager to have his fellow rabble-rouser along. "I’m replacing these people on the shore because all they want to do is witness and I’m against that," Watson told me. "So we feel that what’s needed here, we’re going to try to get about 30 or 40 volunteers to go in there, intervene, fill up the jails."
"If you want to fight climate change," Michel said, "you’ve got to protect the front line of environmental protections, which is the ocean." |
