Olivia Møller
Freediver - Activist - Explorer
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Olivia Møller
Freediver - Activist - Explorer
Some stories are told in ink. Others are told in blood.
As climate scientists urge humanity to halve emissions within the next five years and microplastics rain down from the sky, we find ourselves on the edge of ecological collapse. Amid rising heat waves, collapsing amphibian populations, and wildfire-scarred rainforests, one ancient, brutal tradition continues unabated, quietly carving red scars into blue waters.
In the Faroe Islands, the Grindadráp persists.
This is not a hunt. It is an erasure.
The Grindadráp, often referred to simply as the Grind, is among the world’s longest-standing and most barbaric whale hunts. Without quota, without season, and without mercy, entire pods of pilot whales and white-sided dolphins are driven into shallow bays where they are slaughtered en masse.
What separates this from regulated, subsistence hunting practices elsewhere in the Arctic is not just its scale. It’s the visibility, the indiscriminate nature, and the enduring moral blindness behind it. Entire family groups are wiped out in a single afternoon. Mothers, calves, pregnant whales. Gone. The gene pool of these social, intelligent creatures collapses with every hunt, shrinking biodiversity with implications beyond the islands.
Grindadráp is not survival. It’s a spectacle. And yet, in 2025, it continues.
A new Sea Shepherd video, released this July, documents a recent hunt with gut-wrenching precision. Drone footage captures the moment whales are herded into the bay. Their cries, audible and desperate, are silenced one by one. Among the victims were heavily pregnant females and unweaned calves, their bodies dragged across the rocks, their trauma washed back into the sea.
This isn’t hunting. It’s ecocide disguised as heritage.
The defenders of the Grind argue that it is “part of Faroese culture.” But culture, like language or architecture, is not immune to evolution. And in a world choking on carbon and plastic, where the Amazon burns and PFAS poisons our rain, continuing the mass slaughter of cetaceans under the banner of tradition is not only indefensible, it is catastrophic.
The Grind isn’t happening in isolation. It’s one thread in a collapsing ecological tapestry.
This year alone:
Fossil-fueled heat waves killed over 1,500 people in Europe, exposing the human cost of inaction.
The Amazon rainforest, long considered the planet’s lungs, suffered its worst fires in decades.
Microplastics and “forever chemicals” have now infiltrated rainwater across continents.
Frogs, vital barometers of environmental stability, are showing signs of fatal heat stress.
Financial institutions, often claiming climate neutrality, continue to fund emissions-heavy industries, hiding their complicity in greenwashed portfolios.
All of this points to a singular truth: the way we treat animals, ecosystems, and each other are inextricably linked. Our crises are not separate. They are symphonic.
In a recent article titled "Compassion vs. Tradition," Sea Shepherd highlights a crucial contrast. While Denmark continues to shield the Faroe Islands from international scrutiny, Iceland has declared a complete halt to commercial whaling for the rest of the year, citing animal welfare concerns.
This divergence reveals a broader, planetary choice: evolve or perish.
We either move toward a future built on sustainability, empathy, and science, or retreat into rituals that accelerate our own extinction. What’s more archaic, driving an electric vehicle while your country funds whale slaughter, or learning to let go of old habits for the sake of the species that share this Earth with us?
The Grindadráp is more than a regional atrocity. It is a mirror.
A mirror for Europe’s contradictory environmental policies. A mirror for the hypocrisy of industrialized nations lecturing on conservation while enabling destruction. And a mirror for every one of us who says we care about the planet but remains silent when the ocean turns red.
We are running out of time.
Not just for whales. But for coral reefs, rainforests, frogs, bees, breathable air, and drinkable water. The ecosystem is not forgiving. It does not negotiate. It reflects.
If we want a future worth living in, we must be willing to abandon traditions that kill, whether it’s whaling, oil drilling, or overconsumption masked as lifestyle.
Ending the Grindadráp won’t fix the planet. But it would be a start. A line in the sand. A decision that, finally, we’ve learned to listen to the ocean instead of conquer it.