On Tuesday the local government of the Faroe Islands saved 1,400 dolphins from dying in a single day during a traditional hunt, despite the unrest, even in this Nordic archipelago.
“There is no doubt that the whale is a spectacular sight in the Faroe Islands for those who do not hunt and kill polos. However, these hunts are well organized and fully regulated,” a Torshavn government spokesman told AFP.
An ancient traditional “grind” or “grindtrop” in the Faroe Islands, the Danish Autonomous Region in the North Sea, around them, includes a small Cetacean school in a bay with boats. Thus they are within the boundaries of the fishermen who stayed on the land and killed them with knives.
They are also commonly known as pilot whales and pilot whales, but on Sunday there were 1,423 white-winged dolphins whose hunting was recognized. It happened in the center of the archipelago, in Fjord, near Scala.
“We do not have a tradition of hunting these mammals, there are usually a few on the hunt, but we usually do not kill many,” explained KVF, a journalist with the local public television channel, Hallur Aw Rana.
According to him, such a large number of captures had never been made in the archipelago.
Photos of more than a thousand bloody Cetaceans on the beach have generated much criticism.
“It seems so serious, it usually took time to kill them all when it was so fast,” the reporter said, adding that 53% of the island’s population opposes fishing for this species.
Environmental NGO Sea Shepherd considers “grinding” to be a “barbaric practice”, but Pharos officials consider it a standard hunting system.
The product of this fishing is not commercialized but meat is used.
According to local estimates, there are about 100,000 pilot whales around the archipelago, which is home to about 50,000 people.
