Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.08.2013, Side 10

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Iceland | Whaling
By Rebecca Louder
The Wrong Kind Of Whale Watching
“How mentally prepared for this should we be?” I asked our driver, Marvin Lee Dupree, as we approached
the turn-off to Hvalfjörður. Marvin paused, made a pensive sneer and replied. “It’s pretty gnarly.”
On Friday, August 2, we received a call to our office from
known activist Sigursteinn Másson inviting us along
to an anti-whale hunting protest set up by the Interna-
tional Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). The whaling
ships Hvalur 8 and Hvalur 9 had reportedly caught two
fin whales, despite having no current buyer for the meat
or any means of shipping it through other countries, and
were dragging them into the fjord to the whaling station.
A few of us at Grapevine decided to go along.
Into the fjord
Approaching the mouth of the fjord, we noticed two
boats tailing each other towards the whaling station,
and Marvin sped up the car. “I want us to be ready
for them when they get there,” he said, referring to the
protestors. Finally he pulled off the road and parked in
front of a chain link fence, next to several other vehi-
cles. “This is kind of a community event. People in the
area come out to see this.”
A few steps past the other cars I looked down to
the right at what appeared to be the lower-half of a fin
whale laid out on an open concrete dock, sawed clean
through at the midsection and splayed open lengthwise,
exposing muscle, entrails and the spine. About a dozen
male workers in waterproof coveralls walked around
and on the carcass using chainsaws and large straight
hooks to cut off pieces of flesh, meat and bone, and then
drag them over to various areas of the work-dock, seem-
ingly dependent on where the parts were headed to next.
Mechanical animals
Large automatic pulleys were installed on the work-
dock and a hook-line was drawn from the back-end
pulley, attached to the skin of the whale—which had al-
ready been loosened by the workers—and then stripped
off the carcass in one mechanical motion. As the work-
ers finished removing the skin and dragged it into a
container full of (presumably) water at the back of the
dock, a second whale was being dragged through the
open water up to the dock.
One worker walked around with a large mop pushing
waves of blood back towards the sea, which was already
full of crimson pools. The work was done quickly to the
point of appearing sloppy, with seemingly little atten-
tion paid to hygiene. The work-dock and carcass were
not hosed off during the carving and workers wantonly
switched between walking on the ground and on the
spine. The place emanated an acrid smell, similar to the
metallic salty taste of putting an old key in your mouth.
Masses of birds flocked onto the whale as it was
dragged through the open water, pecking at it and get-
ting their fill. Once the second whale reached the edge
of the dock, it stayed bobbing in the water for several
minutes while a group of about eight people stood
down at the edge looking at it from up close. Marvin
later said that these were most likely people invested
in whale hunting in some way, be it monetarily, politi-
cally or personally.
Pointless
Meanwhile, the protestors had gathered on the side of the
hill overlooking the dock, holding up cardboard hands
pointing towards the ocean that read, “What’s the point?”
along with a large cloth banner that reiterated the ques-
tion. While implicitly peaceful, the protesters were al-
most passive, spending the time quietly observing the
activity of the whaling workers, or chit-chatting amongst
themselves. The lines between interested onlooker, hor-
rified visitor and outraged protester were almost impos-
sible to distinguish, save for those cardboard hands.
The workers finished butchering up the first whale
and dragged the remaining chunks off, dropping them
into holes in the dock that possibly led to further process-
ing or simply a refuse pile. Marvin walked down from
the hillside and pointed my attention toward a worker
heading to the far back end of the dock, dragging away
with him the titular fin. It was taken somewhere out of
sight but not discarded, most likely to be kept as a trophy.
The second whale was now attached by its tail to the
hook-line of one of the pulleys and gradually brought
up onto the dock in the same place the first whale had
been. The workers stood around it, dwarfed by the mass
of the second largest cetacean in the ocean. At this
point, there didn’t seem to be much need to watch the
slow-motion replay.
The protest broke up and people began heading back
to their vehicles, save for a few onlookers there for neu-
tral observation (or perhaps genuine entertainment?
Who’s to say). On the drive back, through the warm, sun-
filled fjord, our intern spoke up. “It’s weird because I’d
never seen a whale before,” she said. “And now the first
time I saw one, it was dead.”
Marvin walked down from
the hillside and pointed my
attention towards a worker
heading towards the far back
end of the dock, dragging
away with him the titular fin.
“
„
Finback whales are being hunted exclusively by the company Hvalur hf.
Their buyers in Japan recently cancelled their contract after it was revealed
the meat was being used for dog treats.
Rebecca Louder
10The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 12 — 2013
is going to cost, as many tobacco
smokers around Iceland have been
doing. Following the 15% increase
of the tax on tobacco at the start
of the year, tobacco sales have
dropped by 10.4% since January.
Plus, smoking conditions are prob-
ably unfavourable with the recent
trend of "gloomiest weather since..."
headlines. This past month Reykja-
vík was subject to the coldest July
since 2002, with an average temper-
ature of 10,6°C.
Furthermore, the former Minister of
Finance Gylfi Magnússon assures
Iceland that Sanati's claims are pre-
sumptuous and wrong. Santani's
charge against Iceland's "zombie
banks" would not even apply to the
old banking system, Gylfi remarks,
let alone the new one which San-
tani doesn't seem to know anything
about. Basically, according to Gylfi,
Santani is just being a drama queen.

But being a drama queen isn't al-
ways a bad thing, especially if you
were competing in Reykjavík's sec-
ond annual drag contest held in
Harpa's Eldborg concert hall over
Pride week. Congratulations to the
'Foxy Ladies' duo Márky Cántalejo
and Chris Mercado and to Brjánn
Hróðmarsson for being crowned
this year's Drag Queens and King.
And thanks for contributing to Ice-
land's growing reputation as great
entertainers.
That reputation, by the way, was
given a pretty hefty boost when
Rolling Stone magazine named
Sigur Rós one of the Top 50 Great-
est Live Acts Right Now. The article
likened the band's trippy stage pres-
ence to Pink Floyd, and praised Jón-
si for his crowd-destroying union of
bow and guitar.
Speaking of harmonious unions, Di-
rector Baltasar Kormákur and CCP
Games are joining forces to create a
TV series based on the wildly popu-
lar game, EVE Online. He admits
that his personal interest in gaming
never really evolved beyond a brief
Pac-Man affinity as a child, but he
uses this as an asset to make the
series appealing to a wider range of
people, and hopefully bring in some
new fans. You got this, Kormákur.
NEWS IN BRIEF
AUGUST