First Faroes hunt of the season kills 13 whales
It is believed that up to 13 whales have been killed in the first hunt (or grind) of the season in the Faroes. The grind took place in Fuglafirði with about 20 boats participating.
Every year in the Faroe Islands, a territory of Denmark, hundreds of pilot whales and other species including bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic white-sided dolphins and northern bottlenose whales, are hunted for their meat. The techniques used are intensely stressful and cruel. Entire family groups are rounded up out at sea by small motor boats and driven to the shore. Typically, once they are stranded in shallow water, blunt-ended metal hooks are inserted into their blowholes and used to drag the whales up the beach, where they are killed with a knife cut to their major blood vessels.
Over 3,000 pilot whales have been killed since the beginning of 2010, raising serious human health, animal welfare and conservation concerns. Local people risk ingesting high levels of toxic compounds found in pilot whales if they continue to eat pilot whale meat