On the bloody shores: the Faroese again brutally kill hundreds of dolphins

From year to year, from the end of June, the coastal waters washing the Faroe Islands turn scarlet. The sea absorbs waterfalls of the blood of its children — grinds, they are also black dolphins. This is how an old national fun called Grindadrap ("Killing whales") looks like.

Since the XVI century, the Faroese have been hunting the grinds in a barbaric way: they drive a whole flock aground, after which they cut the arteries of the animals and leave them to bleed on the shore. At least a thousand dolphins die during the summer. Once this riot served as a source of food for local residents, but now most of the extracted meat is simply rotting in warehouses.

(13 photos in total)

In June, the migration period begins for cetaceans of the North Atlantic. They go to the food-rich waters of Svalbard and the Arctic. The route runs through the Faroe Islands, where dolphins meet a whole armada of boats and boats. The ships line up in a semicircle behind the flock, and people start throwing stones into the water, creating a wall of bubbles. Animals perceive them as an obstacle and change course. So the Faroese manage to direct them to land. Dolphins are chased until they come ashore.

A horrific massacre is unfolding in the shallow water. Hundreds of local residents, including many women and children, drag dolphins with hooks and dissect their bodies in the place of accumulation of veins and arteries. It never occurs to anyone to make the death of unfortunate creatures quick and painless. When the animals die, having previously emitted liters of blood, the carcasses are dragged to the piers for cutting.

The Faroese claim that they arrange it for the sake of meat. But this version is very doubtful. Tens of tons of meat per year for a region with a population of 50 thousand people? Well, if only to eat them. This is hardly what the inhabitants of the islands do, where the GDP per capita is about 46 thousand dollars.

Of course, this inhumane custom causes violent indignation on the part of animal rights defenders. As you know, dolphins are very smart, they feel pain and fear almost as much as we do. In the summer months, protests take place in the Faroes, activists go to sea to prevent the grindhouse.

But the fact is that the Faroe Islands have had the status of an autonomous region since 1948, Denmark solves only foreign policy and defense issues. So the local government is free to independently regulate internal politics, and it has nothing against Grindadrap.