Hundreds of whales and dolphins slaughtered and dragged ashore barely alive in horrifying hunts off the Faroe Islands
Residents brutally drive the animals into shallow waters before killing them with a spinal lance
THESE horrifying images show hundreds of whales and dolphins being slaughtered and dragged ashore alive in hunts off the Faroe Islands.
Activists from Sea Shepherd Global pictured the horrific scenes on the Danish archipelago halfway between Norway and Iceland.
Fishermen drive herds of pilot whales and Atlantic white-sided dolphins into shallow waters.
They are then killed through a spinal lance that is driven through the animals' neck to break their spinal cords.
Volunteers, posing as tourists, watched nine hunts from July to September that they claim wiped out 198 dolphins and 436 whales.
One Sea Shepherd volunteer told Fox News: "Witnessing a grind first hand was truly an eye-opening experience.
“As the pilot whales were driven to the shoreline by the small boats the intensity of the thrashing bodies grew.
"Hooks were sunk into the blowholes and the whales were dragged onto the shore in a sadistic game of ‘Tug of War.’
"We witnessed whales seemingly bashing their heads against the stones in a frenzy.”
Another eyewitness also described a hunt at the village of Bour on August 31 where 29 long-finned pilot whales were reportedly killed.
“We recorded children attempting to remove the teeth of several whales with nothing more than a pocket knife as well as removing slices of what appeared to be a tumour on one whale,” the volunteer said.
Fox News reported the island's government said 1,700 pilot whales and white-sided dolphins (including the aforementioned hunts) have been caught in the Faroe Islands so far this year.
The hunts, which are legal in Denmark, date back to the 16th century.
When whales are spotted during their migration, fisherman will head out in boats and surround the herd in a massive convoy driving them to shore at one of 19 designated killing zones.
The "Grindadrap", the Faroese term for whale killing, happens several times a year.
The government defended the bloody practice, telling Fox News: "Sea Shepherd representatives will go to any lengths to paint a negative picture of the Faroese whale hunt as barbaric and evil with the aim of inciting anger and outrage against the people of the Faroe Islands.
"Catches are shared largely without the exchange of money among the participants in a whale drive and residents of the local district where they are landed.
"Each whale provides the communities with several hundred kilos of meat and blubber – meat that otherwise had to be imported from abroad."
Officials said the annual catch of pilot whales "represents one per cent of the total estimated stock".
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