WDCS has received unfortunate news that another ‘grind’ (drive hunt) has taken place in the Faroe Islands where approximately 60 pilot whales were killed on July 10th. Images from the hunts can be accessed here, but viewer caution advised. We will report more details as they become available.
The drive hunts are an extremely inhumane practice where entire family groups of pilot whales are rounded up out at sea by small motor boats and driven to the shore where they are killed in shallow bays. Once they beach, blunt-ended metal hooks inserted into their blowholes are used to drag the whales up the beach or in the shallows, where they are killed with a knife cut to their major blood vessels. WDCS believes that the driving, dragging and killing, all of which takes place within view of their pod members, is intensely stressful and cruel. Pilot whales, and other species, including bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic white-sided dolphins and northern bottlenose whales, are still hunted for their meat in the Faroe Islands.