Ivan has a whale of a time

WHALSAY man Ivan Reid had a once in a lifetime encounter on Monday morning when he suddenly found himself surrounded by around 50 pilot whales.

Reid was out on his small angling boat Impulse off his home island when he was alerted by the crew of the nearby inter island ferry that a pod of whales was heading north into Linga Sound.

“I have never seen anything like it before,” he said. “They were right alongside the boat.

“There were larger whales at the outside of the pod. It looked as though they were protecting the smaller animals in the centre.”

Pilot whales are at the centre of an international row over whether the Faroese have the right to hunt the mammals by driving them ashore in what is known as the Grind.

Reid said he was amazed to realise how easy it was to herd the five to seven metres long animals as his small boat became surrounded.

“It was easy to see how you could caa’ (drive) them in the direction you wanted to,” he said.

Hunting pilot whales by driving them ashore was practiced in Shetland until the 1930s. These are also locally known as caa’ing whales.