Two pilot whale hunts took place yesterday, killing a total of 446 animals. These two hunts bring the numbers grindadráp this year at five.
It is an age-old – sometimes controversial – tradition. A small school of cetaceans is chased into a bay by boats and surrounded. The fishermen who have remained on land then go into the water up to their waists and kill the animals with knives. The gruesome images of the dead animals and the bloody sea cause outrage among animal rights activists every year.
In 2014, the NGO Sea Shepherd managed to disrupt that year’s season. They denounce a regulation that allows Danish military ships to intervene to prevent this practice in Faroe waters. The inhabitants of the islands who defend the hunt believe that foreign media and NGOs do not respect their culture.
In 2022, there was another 500 cap on dolphin slaughter, following an “unusually large” catch of 1,423. The limit applies for two years. The government also acknowledged that the catch had not gone according to plan. A petition demanding an end to the hunt was signed more than 1.3 million times worldwide.
The eighteen islands lie between Iceland, Norway and Scotland.