‘It’s one of those smaller whales’ they said, obviously searching for the right translation.
They tricked me!
There I sat, munching thoughtfully on a piece of jet-black meat. ‘A bit like beef. Different aftertaste though.’ My host’s mother had cooked up the chunk of ‘whale’, served in a sauce made of its own gravy. It was underwhelming! I don’t mean that it tasted bad — it was lovely! — but obviously, after all of that foreplay, I expected a veritable taste explosion. Instead, it was like very dense, stewed beef. And black… really, it’s black meat. Very odd; very tasty!
‘You need to try it with spik, the blubber! That makes all the difference.’ I nodded my approval, not wanting to look like a wussy, cowardly tourist.
So, still to try: puffin, blubber and, as it turns out, whale! Yes, I did some research I actually ate Atlantic white-sided dolphin! But don’t worry, they’re not endangered and nor do they look nothing like those cute Bottlenosed ‘Flipper’ dolphins. In fact, they are just like little whales!
At least that’s what I’m telling myself…
Two more photos for you, one from a pretty little village called Gjógv (which is a tourist trap, or so I’m told) which has this huge canyon in its back yard. Really, the rear of their houses backs onto a 100-meter deep chasm. There isn’t even a fence to prevent any would-be dare-devil kiddies from jumping into the water below.
The other photo is an incredibly colourful cave that we went into on our trip into the Atlantic Ocean along the coast of Streymoy. If anyone knows how such colours came to exist, do share! I assume it’s algae growth or chemical deposits…
(The majority of the canyon is around the corner out of sight… I tried to photograph it but failed, alas!)
(AND the blue sea! Could you get more colourful if you tried?)
Only three days until the wet t-shirt contest!!
Eric
Jul 20, 2009
That has to be bad sea-karma.
pinkjellybaby
Jul 20, 2009
These are my favourite pictures yet, beautiful colours..
Andhari
Jul 20, 2009
Sebbie what were you doing? Oh noooo freeeee willy..I imagine if I was reading this when I was 8 I would cry..
But oh well. Its an experience with local food. Do you think you can eat dried bugs satay if you visit Thailand?
Jan Egil Kristiansen
Jul 20, 2009
Well, all dolphins are whales, and pilot whales are dolphins.
I take some delight in telling the Faroese I ate seagull, they have their food taboos, too. To really upset them, say you ate oystercatcher.
sebastian
Jul 20, 2009
Seagull… is it tasty?! We already had Oystercatcher, Jan… We found one while walking and… BANG!
I think if I fall into the sea up here, Eric, I have more immediate concerns… like dying of hypothermia within a couple of minutes. But yes, if I fall overboard in the Caribbean and Flipper ignores me, I will briefly think, with a scowl on my face, of the time I ate dolphin… and then drown.
Dried bugs… sure! As long as they are big, juicy ones. And they have lots of flavour!
Glad you like ‘em Pink
I think this is about as colourful as the Faroes get however…!
sebastian's mother
Jul 20, 2009
Both photos are BEAUTIFUL!
Art
Jul 20, 2009
You ate a dolphin…!
Jan Egil Kristiansen
Jul 20, 2009
Seagull is about like guillemot. And probably like puffin (oops – another cutie!), but I’m not sure, many years passed between my seagull and puffin eating.
sebastian
Jul 20, 2009
I think we’re going to a restaurant in Vidareidi to try puffin (and dried fish/sheep maybe?) — don’t think seagull is on the menu though… unless we go hunting with shotguns…!
Can we still be friends Art?
MinD
Jul 20, 2009
Was it like seafood, or more like beef? I hate seafood. Although I don’t think I could ever calm myself enough to eat dolphin or whale!!!
Amazing photos, yet again.
sebastian
Jul 20, 2009
100% ‘meaty’ — there was an aftertaste which I still haven’t quite put my finger on. I guess because it tastes like nothing else! It’s like dense beef. Pretty weird really…
You’re meant to have it with some blubber still attached though, adds more flavour and I imagine makes it more tender!
Apart from the ebon appearance you don’t know it’s dolphin or whale… And thanks
Jaime
Jul 20, 2009
I’m really glad you’re enjoying yourself.
the girl in stiletto
Jul 20, 2009
you did what?!!?? you dolphin-eater!
oh, the second photo is beyond beautiful. you should get a wife with that photo.
(and i see that your mother has made her majestic appearance
)
i guess she misses you much, seb
sebastian
Jul 21, 2009
*hangs head*
She’s just jealous of all the crazy new food I’m getting to try!
Just Playing Pretend
Jul 21, 2009
Sebby! You ate dolphin!?!
I get it but I’m sad.
That last picture though brightened me back up again.
Hannah
Jul 21, 2009
you are braver than I…no way would i have eaten dolphin.
The two pictures are beautiful!
The Demigoddess
Jul 22, 2009
A dolphin? Even if you clarified it wasn’t THAT kind of dolphin (the ones that jump through hoops at Ocean Park) I still have that uneasy feeling in my stomach while reading this…It’s like that time the neighbors cooked some other neighbor’s dog and served it for dinner to the dog owner..and no one knew it was a dog.
Well, I’m in the Philippines so you won’t be surprised by all the exotic delicacies.
Eleni
Jul 22, 2009
Still smart, still carnivores, still cetaceans; I’m still worrying. *Sigh*–what can you do? There’s actually a documentary about dolphin killing (in Japan) coming out at the end of the month. FYI, pilot whales are technically dolphins, so you can’t check “whale” off of your list even if you get your hands on one of them.
Love the cave photo! That’s so cool!
sebastian
Jul 22, 2009
Ah-hah but aren’t all whales dolphins and all dolphins whales?!
Do I have to really go to Japan or some place where they still hunt REAL whales? Imagine how many people a Blue Whale could feed!
This blog entry kind of pales in comparison to the most recent one. Damn that blubber; God that was foul.
I can’t wait to visit the Far East and see what it has to offer, Demi
Kali
Jul 23, 2009
I once found a dead baby Atlantic White-Sided dolphin washed up on the beach near my home and cried, so the idea of actually eating one horrifies me. Having said that, different strokes for different folks. And I’m being a hypocrite because I’ve tried my favourite animal (and found it quite tasty).
Kali
Jul 23, 2009
Also – this photograph repulses me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whaling_in_the_Faroe_Islands.jpg
Kali
Jul 23, 2009
PS: That cave is awesome btw.
sebastian
Jul 23, 2009
It shouldn’t repulse you any more than seeing a bunch of cows being led into a slaughter shed… right? I think it’s a little sad that whale hunting has mostly been banned because of the way blood in water looks incredibly graphic. Surely people realise that a cow has just as much blood, only it goes down a drain instead of into the sea!
Same goes for the eatin’!
I guess if there had been more films and TV shows about friendly cows the story might be different…
Eleni
Jul 23, 2009
“Ah-hah but aren’t all whales dolphins and all dolphins whales?!”
No. There is one common convention that makes a distinction between whales, dolphins, and porpoises. I’ll grant that this is somewhat debatable, since some people use the terms in different ways. I think it is acceptable to say that all dolphins are whales (though for the context of our discussion, if you did not consider the dolphin you ate to be whale, then the pilot whale would also not count as a whale). But it would definitely be incorrect to say that all whales are dolphins. Not worth an “Ah-hah.”
“It shouldn’t repulse you any more than seeing a bunch of cows being led into a slaughter shed… right?”
Not necessarily. I’ve already been through my “Don’t eat carnivores, it’s inefficient” argument, plus I think hunting anything is necessarily less sustainable than farming. So that makes eating dolphin just a worse idea than eating cows. Now, I am not an expert, but I think it is generally accepted that dolphins are smarter than cows. I could go off on a whole philosophical tangent on this subject, but I’ll just say that the more like *us* an animal is–the more we believe it to understand and to feel as we do–the sadder we feel when it dies. This justifies Kali and others’ more negative reaction to the idea of eating dolphins than eating cows.
sebastian
Jul 23, 2009
And pigs are meant to be even more intelligent, right?
Surely it’s completely irrational to compare various intelligence levels in our prospective food? I mean, really, we know that every animal communicates. We know that every animal makes choices. The only real difference is the ol’ sentience thingee. I mean, there might be the old ‘which animals have souls and which don’t?’ cut-off, but other than that I can’t think of a logical reason to find whale hunting more disgusting than pig slaughtering.
Also, is it ALL dolphins that are really intelligent and have sex for fun? Or is it just the bottlenose ones?
Do people really think that whales are more like us than cows or pigs…? *looks at a picture* I think it’s more likely based on the ‘majestic water creature’ leaping about and dazzling audiences — and Flipper and Free Willy and…
Or perhaps it’s because their clicks are more humanoid than a cow’s mooing or pig’s oinking! This should be analysed, Eleni!
Now I have to go look at a church so I must bid you farewell for now!
Eleni
Jul 23, 2009
No, pigs are not meant to be even more intelligent than dolphins. Pigs are very smart–smarter than dogs–but they are not supposed to be smarter than chimps, dolphins, or elephants. It is true that there are some dolphin species that are supposed to be smarter than other species, and it is likely that we are projecting their intelligence over all dolphin species because we don’t know better. Maybe you were eating the dumbest dolphin species (in which case I’d still say it’s bad to eat wild carnivores).
No, I don’t think it’s irrational to compare intelligence levels in our prospective food. To eat is essentially to condone killing, and we base our opinion of killing animals in terms of how similar their intelligence is to ours. Every animal may communicate and make choices (not sure that’s true, but I’ll grant that at least cows and pigs do), but how does an animal’s thinking compare to ours? For example, the belief that lobsters cannot feel pain and fear in the same way we do allows many people to plop them in a pot of boiling water when they would never do the same to a cow–not just because they don’t have a pot big enough. I mean, bacteria “communicate”, but even PETA wouldn’t cry at the death of a streptococcus bacteria (yes, I crossed out of the animal kingdom, but I don’t think taxonomy matters in this discussion). People are more likely to protest the use of chimps in scientific labs than the use of mice, simply because we believe chimps to be smarter–they think more like we do. And it is a brain thing–lemurs get less respect than dolphins because even though they are primates, they are less intelligent than dolphins.
A lot of our understanding of animal intelligence is likely wrong–it’s a difficult subject to study–but it still wouldn’t be irrational to base our reactions on what is believed at the time. There may have been a time where it was as clear-cut as “humans are the ones who are made in God’s image, we have souls and go to heaven, all the other animals are soulless and are here for our exploitation.” But I think many people don’t believe that anymore. When we witness in another animal a quality that we value in humans–say, complex language–we start to wonder how different we really are, what actually separates us, and, if it is unethical to kill a human, whether it is ethical to kill that animal. Perhaps the animals of higher intelligence are “sentient” enough to deserve rights.
I suppose there is no good reason why killing a stupid whale should be worse than killing a wild pig native to a given area. In that case, I guess it would be an irrational aesthetic choice, bolstered by the misguided projection of dolphin intelligence onto its relatives as well as pretty pictures of whales breaching free in the waves… I will say, though, that I’ve never seen Flipper but I have seen Babe, so by the “I’ve seen it in a movie” argument I should prefer pigs. Having trouble thinking of a cow movie, though.
I would say dolphin clicks are less humanoid than mooing or oinking, though that may be my bias because I did not grow up speaking a clicking language! Though just the fact that we have onomatopoetic words specific to cows and pigs whereas we use the same word for dolphin sounds that we use for all sorts of non-biological sounds may say something.
Got to go… I’m supposed to be house hunting!
Eleni
Jul 23, 2009
Oh jeez, that turned out really long. Grr, I don’t have time for this!
sebastian
Jul 24, 2009
It was a very good text wall and I’m sorry that you got all angry and frumpy and irritated!
(I actually went out to some Faroese pub after writing that first sentence, so if the following doesn’t make sense it’s because I’m drunk…)
Actually, I’m not going to argue it here. It deserves its own, sober discussion in a shiny new blog entry!
tikno
Jul 30, 2009
Photo at the bottom of this post is amazing.