Skip to content
All news
  • All news
  • About whales & dolphins
  • Corporates
  • Create healthy seas
  • End captivity
  • Green Whale
  • Prevent bycatch
  • Prevent deaths in nets
  • Science
  • Scottish Dolphin Centre
  • Stop whaling
  • Stranding
This dead right whale calf had injuries consistent with a vessel strike, including fresh propeller cuts on its back and head, broken ribs, and bruising. Photo: FWC/Tucker Joenz, NOAA Fisheries permit #18786

Emergency Right Whale Petition Seeks Overdue Protections From Vessel Strikes

This dead right whale calf had injuries consistent with a vessel strike, including fresh propeller...
Dolphins with oil rig

Go ahead for new UK oil and gas exploration threatens whales and dolphins

Permission has been granted for the development of the UK's biggest untapped oilfield off Shetland,...
Icelandic hunting vessels in port

Whaling boat kept in port after more hunt cruelty exposed

Icelandic whale hunting fleet One of the whaling boats involved in the latest hunts in...
Commerson's dolphin

New Important Marine Mammal Areas added to global ocean conservation list

Commerson's dolphin Experts from a number of countries have mapped out a new set of...

Leading Faroese medical expert warns against eating whale meat

Chief Physician at the Department of Occupational Medicine and Public Health in the Faroes, Dr. Pal Weihe has contradicted government advice and reiterated a warning to the country’s population not to eat whale meat.

High levels of pollutants like mercury, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and PFCs (perfluorinated compounds) from the world’s oceans end up in sea mammals like whales and dolphins and are eaten in the Faroe Islands, Greenland, parts of Canada and Siberia. 

Dr. Weihe has been studying the effects of eating pilot whale meat in over 2,300 Faroese children and their mothers since 1984, and concludes that the contaminants in the whale meat and blubber increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, and even cognitive deficiencies in children with prenatal exposure to methylmercury.

In 2011 the Faroese government supported the Faroese Food and Veterinary Authority when it stated that adults should eat one meal of pilot whale meat and blubber per month. However, in a move that seems to trump his own government’s advice,  Dr. Weihe said; “The medical profession in the Faroes is recommending not to eat [pilot whale meat] at all.”

Several thousand Pilot whales have been killed in recent years in the Faroes. The slaughter is brutal. Once driven to the shore, blunt-ended metal hooks inserted into their blowholes are used to drag the whales up the beach or in the shallows, where they are killed with a knife. Other species, including bottlenose dolphinsAtlantic white-sided dolphins and northern bottlenose whales are still hunted for their meat in the Faroe Islands.

Dr. Weihe went on to say, “[the] silent pollution of the oceans will one day end up on the dinner table in some communities, and our children are paying the price.”

More on whale and dolphin hunts in the Faroe Islands