Dorete Bloch lives in a grass roofed house on the side of a mountain at Velbastaður, 6 km southwest of Tórshavn. She came highly recommended by two different people to join the project.
Dorete “has the best job in the world”. She used to be the director of Faroese Museum of Natural History and is a professor of zoology. Supposedly she is retired, but seemed to us outrageously productive for a pensioner. Pilot whales have been the main focus of her research for a while, although she is currently working on a couple of other projects, including papers on mutation of raven, hare, bats and food of the bottlenose whale. To Riitta’s question “do you have any pets?” the answer was a firm: “No. I am a zoologist. A good animal is a dead animal.”
This concludes the Faroe Islands episode of Eyes as Big as Plates for now. A big thank you to all the kindhearted, friendly and curious Faroese we got to meet and work with, we can’t wait to return soon!
