Whales

Globally, there are 89 known species of whales, of which 24 have been observed in the waters around the Faroe Islands. However, several of them have only visited the Faroe Islands a few times, and even the more frequently seen species typically only appear around the islands for short periods during the year. The most abundant whale species in Faroese waters is the long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas), followed by species such as Atlantic white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus acutus), harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena), fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) and northern bottlenose whale (Hyperoodon ampullatus). Of the six species, only the harbour porpoise stays around the islands all year round.

Whales are traditionally divided into two suborders: baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti). The baleen whales often migrate north in spring when the light increases in intensity and the production in the sea increases. The light and rising temperatures lead to a boom in the populations of copepods and krill, which the whales feed on. They also feed on the large shoals of herring, sand eel and blue whiting, which are also preying on the nutritious crustaceans. During their northern foraging, baleen whales are able to cover 80 % of their annual energy needs, part of which is built up in thick layers of blubber. As autumn approaches, the whales head south to the breeding grounds in warmer waters. Toothed whales display greater variation in their migration patterns and are regularly observed in Faroese waters, even in winter. Unlike baleen whales, they typically look for food in deeper waters, where they eat squid and schooling fish.

The long-finned pilot whale is without comparison the whale species most commonly associated with the Faroe Islands. For more than a thousand years, the Faroese have hunted the pods of long-finned pilot whales that pass the islands, and for generations the black toothed whale has served as an vital resource in Faroese households.

The long-finned pilot whale is a medium-sized toothed whale. Females become just under 5 m long and weigh about 1 tonne, while males can become 6.5 m long and weigh just over 2 tonnes. Satellite tracking has revealed that the whales migrate widely in the North Atlantic and can cover distances of 70‑111 km per day. Long-finned pilot whales are seen in Faroese waters all year round, but most frequently in late summer. Most catches thus take place in July-September, when the pods number an average of 80 individuals.

Since whale surveys in the North Atlantic typically only observe pods of around 30 individuals, there is strong evidence that the whales gather in larger pods when they stay around the Faroe Islands. The pods consist of related females of all ages, one of whom leads the pod, as well as their young and a few sexually mature males. At the age of about nine years, the young males become sexually mature and are banished from the pod. The females become sexually mature at the age of seven and have an average of one young every five years. Studies have shown that only about 8 % of the young in a pod have a father from the pod, so females mate extensively across pods. Females can reach an age of approx. 60 years, while mortality is greater in males, who rarely get more than 40 years old. The total population is estimated at more than half a million individuals, making the long-finned pilot whale one of the most abundant whales in the North Atlantic.

Both white-sided dolphin and harbour porpoise occasionally appear in mixed pods with long-finned pilot whales, so they are sometimes also caught during the hunt for longfinned pilot whale. The white-sided dolphin has become more abundant in Faroese waters, and the total population in the North Atlantic is just under 200,000 individuals. Since it has become easy to round up the fast whales by motor boats, the actual catch of white-sided dolphin has increased over the past few decades. Harbour porpoise is also hunted, but now only to a limited extent.

Orca (Orcinus orca) and sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) can also be seen around the Faroe Islands. Pods of orca show up at the islands once or twice a year where they are clearly hunting for grey seals. Sperm whales are seen more rarely and only come in smaller pods of adult males.

Among the more peculiar guests is the northern bottlenose whale. It belongs to the bottle-nosed whales and is usually a rare sight. In the Faroe Islands, however, it is well-known because, for unexplained reasons, an average of one bottlenose whale is stranded each year at two villages on Suðuroy. The whales do not go to waste, and according to tradition, the meat is shared among those living in the area.

With a length of up to 30 m and weighing of up to 160 tonnes, the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) stands out from the already large baleen whales, and at the beginning of the hunting for large whales, it was the one that the whalers mainly went for. At the end of spring, the blue whales passed through the fjords on the west side of the Faroe Islands, where the whaling boats could lie in wait for the colossal animals. However, the original population was small, and it was not long before catches began to decline. During the first five seasons, 23 blue whales were caught, and in the years up to 1908 the whalers managed to kill a total of 363 blue whales, corresponding to 60 % of the total catch. The North Atlantic population of blue whales currently stands at approx. 3,000 individuals, which is so low that female blue whales have had hybrid offspring with male fin whales in the absence of males of their own species.

After the blue whale, the fin whale is the largest of all whales with a length of up to about 20 m. It is also the most abundant of the large baleen whales in the Faroese waters as well as in the rest of the North Atlantic. During hunting for large whales in 1894‑1968, fin whales made up 68 % of the total catch, corresponding to 7,601 whales. When whaling ceased, populations began to grow again and has now reached 80 % of its original size. Today, the total population of fin whales in the North Atlantic is about 50,000 individuals, of which some 5,000 stay at the Faroe Islands in summer.

The up to 18 m long sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis) was also an important prey during the hunting for large whales and the total catch reached 2,258 whales in Faroese waters. However, catches varied considerably from year to year, which was due, in part, to the fact that the sei whales’ northward migration takes place later in the year than the other baleen whales.

The more scarce humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) and minke whales have also been caught. Although they are a much rarer sight, the whale surveys that have been carried out six times in the North Atlantic since 1987 suggest that the number of humpback whales in Faroese waters has increased. The up to 15 m long humpback whale passes the Faroe Islands when it migrates from the Caribbean to Iceland and the Barents Sea in spring to forage on capelin and sand eel. During the hunting for large whales, only 255 humpback whales were caught. The catches of the small, around 10 m long minke whales were even smaller. Faroese cutters hunted it over a ten-year period from the mid-1960s, but caught just over 100 individuals. The minke whale or common minke whale, as it is also called, enters Faroese waters when it migrates to and from the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea.

Hunting for long-finned pilot whales

Hunting for long-finned pilot whales has probably been a tradition in the Faroe Islands since the Viking Age, and today hunting is still considered part of Faroese cultural identity. Every hunt for longfinned pilot whale is a big social event in the villages where everyone can participate and where meat and lard are distributed for free and equally between participants and residents. In the past, hunting for long-finned pilot whale also helped to keep famine at bay during the periods when the barren rocky landscape did not produce enough crops.

The long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas) migrate past the islands in small and large pods all year round, but most frequently in July and August. When a pod is discovered close to land, a grindaboð (pilot whale message) is sent out. In the past, this was done by lighting fires that could be seen from several villages, and by shouting, rowing across the sounds or running to the nearest villages. Originally, the villagers rowed out to get the whales in wooden boats, but today the pods are driven together and towards land with small, fastsailing motorboats. The boats spread out in a semi-circle behind the pod and drive the whales onto the beach where they are killed. While the boats are now modern, traditional tools are still used during the hunt: loose stones and stones attached to strings, which are thrown into the water behind the whales, ropes with whale hooks to secure the whales, and knives and lances for killing. There are 23 authorised whaling beaches into which it is permitted to drive the whales, and it is the sheriff of the area who, together with four whale drive foremen, is responsible for organising and distributing the catch.

There are records of the pilot whale catches, which go all the way back to 1584, and complete records from 1709, making the pilot whale statistics the world’s oldest catch statistics. In the records, each catch is broken down by location, number of pods and total number of whales. The value of each whale was valued in the unit skinn. Even today, each individual whale is valued, which takes place with an valuation stick with a logarithmic scale, so that participants and residents are assigned the same share, regardless of whether it is a large or a small whale.

The pilot whale catch varies a lot. While in certain years, no or very few whales are caught, there have also been periods with very large catches. Since 1709, an average of six pods with a total of 835 whales have been caught each year. In the past 100 years, annual catches have been between 500 and 1,500 pilot whales. The largest number of whales was caught in 1941, when the total pilot whale catch reached 28 pods with a total of 4,480 whales.

In its latest assessment from 2018, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) classifies the world population of the long-finned pilot whale as least concern (LC), and pilot whale hunting should therefore be considered as sustainable. Seen from the outside, however, the hunt can seem extremely violent when the whales are killed on the beach, so that the blood flows and colours the sea red. Pilot whale hunting therefore regularly leads to loud protests from various, mainly foreign, animal organisations, and when 1,428 white-sided dolphins were caught in Skálafjørður in September 2021, it also lead to internal criticism in the Faroe Islands.

Hunting for large whales

Hunting for large whales played an important role in the development of the Faroe Islands from a farming community to an actual fishing nation. The first whaling station was built by Norwegians in 1894, and six more stations were built in the following 11 years. On Streymoy, the well-preserved whaling station við Áir from 1905 still stands as a reminder of the introduction of hunting for large whales.

At the beginning, the whaling fleet consisted of up to 17 fishing boats that were in use year round. The first whales that the boats hunted were the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) and the rare North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis). Over time, however, catches of blue whales began to decrease, so the boats switched to the more numerous fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), which soon made up about two-thirds of the catches. Catches also included sei whales (Balaenoptera borealis), humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) and sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus).

Catches peaked in 1900, when each boat caught an average of 66 whales, and in 1909 the total large whale catch reached 773 whales. Whaling stopped during World War I and II, and in the inter-war years the annual catch was 19‑53 whales per boat. After World War II, hunting for large whales was resumed from the stations in Lopra and við Áir, and until 1949, the whaling fleet grew to seven boats. The catch was good, and in 1950, six boats jointly managed to kill 432 whales. After that, the catches declined, and from 1954, only the við Áir station was in operation. In 1958, four boats caught a total of just 57 whales. The catch was therefore assessed as unprofitable and temporarily suspended. Already in 1962, however, it was resumed with a single boat from the við Áir station, but since the catches remained small, the operation was stopped again in 1968. The last period of hunting for large whales in the Faroe Islands ran from 1977 to 1984, when the við Áir station was in operation again, now owned by the Faroese Government. During this period, hunting took place from a single boat, which caught a total of 32 fin whales.

Further reading

• Benthic animals
• Fish
• Seals
• The fishing industry on the Faroe Islands
• The sea around the Faroe Islands
• Wildlife in the sea around the Faroe Islands

Read more about Nature and landscape on the Faroe Islands