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Island communities in the Caribbean and the North Atlantic still use traditional methods to hunt whales and dolphins for food. Despite declining stocks worldwide and increasing health risks, artisanal whaling remains a popular practice tied to nature's rhythms. The Wake of the Whale presents the art, history, and purpose of whaling in these different cultures and climates, and describes what the future of these societies might look like as modern realities take hold. Sightings of pilot whales in the frigid Nordic waters have drawn residents of the Faroe Islands to their boats and beaches for nearly a thousand years. Down in the tropics, around the islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, artisanal whaling is a younger trade, shaped by the legacies of slavery and colonialism but no less important to the local population. Each culture, Russell Fielding shows, has developed a distinct approach to whaling that preserves key traditions while adapting to threats of scarcity, the requirements of regulation, and a growing awareness of the humane treatment of animals. Yet these strategies struggle to account for the risks of regularly eating meat contaminated with methylmercury and other environmental pollutants introduced from abroad. Fielding considers how these and other factors may change whaling cultures forever, perhaps even bringing an end to this way of life.--

And it's quick, pull the string boys and get the tool out, Haul it away, haul it away! But just two years ago you could hear the same shout Where the whales make free in the harbour. Free in the harbour, the blackfish are sporting again. Free in the harbour, untroubled by comings and goings of men Who once did pursue them as oil from the sea, Hauling away, hauling away! Now they're Calgary roughnecks from Hermitage Bay, Where the whales make free in the harbour. —Stan Rogers, "Free in the Harbour" © 1981, Fogarty's Cove Music. Used with permission.

Whaling is a globally controversial topic, and Faroese drive-style whaling, grindadráp, is no exception. A complex common-pool resource (CPR) institution, viewable from multiple moral, social, economic and political viewpoints, grindadráp is a challenge to assess. Responding to calls to utilise more relationship-centred and multiperspectival approaches to studying CPRs, this article examines grindadráp utilising the theory of socio-cultural viability, which asserts diverse understandings of the world can be classified within a fourfold typology and that 'successful' institutions draw on all four social solidarities in dealing with challenges that arise. The analysis reveals how throughout grindadráp's history its place in Faroese society has been maintained through the enforcement of a largely egalitarian conceptualisation. However, in meeting various challenges around the distribution of meat, sustainability and killing methods, the institution has accepted solutions utilising alternative conceptualisations. It is this adaptability which has allowed grindadráp to remain a popular part of Faroese society, even as dependence on pilot whale meat has declined. The issue of toxins in pilot whale meat is found to be arguably the greatest threat to grindadráp, undermining the egalitarian foundations of the practice, the response to which is something that Faroese society is currently in the process of negotiation.