“There is no doubt that cetacean hunting in the Faroe Islands is a dramatic sight for people who are not used to hunting and killing these mammals. A spokesperson for the Torshavn government told AFP (AFP) that these hunts are well organized and fully regulated.”
With ancestral traditions in the Faroe Islands, a Danish autonomous region lost in the North Sea, the “grind” or “grindadrap” consists of trapping cetaceans in a bay with the help of boats, where they are killed by the fishermen who remain on land.
Usually these are pilot dolphins, also called pilot whales, but on Sunday 1,423 white-faced dolphins, which are also allowed to be caught, were caught on Sunday in a fjord near Skala, in the middle of the archipelago.
“We don’t have a tradition of hunting these mammals, there are usually some on the hunt, but we usually don’t kill that many,” said local TV reporter KVF Hallur av Rana.
According to the journalist, such an important capture did not happen in the archipelago.
According to Agence France-Presse, images showing more than a thousand bloodied whales on the beach have sparked numerous criticisms.
“It seems very extreme and it took a long time to kill them, when it is usually very fast,” Hallor of Rana said, adding that 53% of the archipelago’s population is against hunting this species, but the Faroe Islands have no plans to do so. Abandon this practice.
The “grinding” has been described by the NGO Sea Shepherd as a “barbaric practice” by the NGO Conservation of the Seas, a sustainable fishing system, according to Faroese authorities.
According to local estimates, there are about 100,000 pioneer whales in the waters around the archipelago, which has a population of about 50,000.
In 2020, about 600 cetaceans were killed.
