Photos showing the bodies of more than 1,000 dolphins on the beach sparked outrage on social media. (File)
Copenhagen:
The government of the Faroe Islands, a Danish autonomous territory, on Tuesday faced a cry for the killing of more than 1,400 white-faced dolphins on a day that was said to be the largest hunt in the northern archipelago. .
“There is no doubt that Faroese whaling is a dramatic sight for people unfamiliar with the hunting and killing of mammals,” a government spokesman told AFP.
“Still, the hunts are well organized and fully regulated,” he said.
Traditionally, the North Atlantic islands, which have a population of about 50,000, hunt pilot whales and not dolphins, the spokesman said.
“There are usually a few in the‘ routine ’, but we don’t usually kill such a large number,” said a local TV journalist, Hallur av Rana.
“Grindadrap” is a practice by which hunters first surround the whales with a wide semicircle of fishing boats and then lead them to a bay to be embarked and slaughtered.
“It seems pretty extreme and it took a while to kill them all, although it’s usually pretty quick,” Grandpa Rana said.
Photos showing the bloodied corpses of more than 1,000 white Atlantic dolphins on the beach sparked outrage on social media.
According to Av Rana, although about 53 percent of the island’s population opposes the “grind,” there are no plans to abolish the practice. Authorities insist it is a form of sustainable hunting.
Sea Shepherd, a charity that campaigns against whaling and dolphin hunting, described it as a “barbaric practice.”
According to local estimates, there are about 100,000 pilot whales in the waters of the Faroe Islands and about 600 died last year.
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