Alex Thomas
Warning: This article contains graphic content.
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New photos from the Sea Shepherd team show the aftermath of a mass slaughter of whales and dolphins in the waters near Europe. The Sea Shepherd organization, which gained fame from the “Whale Wars” TV series, was able to gain access to the scene by posing as tourists.
In the photos, groups of ocean mammals are seen slaughtered in water turned red with their blood. The pictures were taken on the Faroe Islands, which are a Danish chain of islands between Norway and Iceland. The Sea Shepherd group told Fox News that the images were captured by volunteers and that their goal is to “expose the continued barbaric killing of dolphins and pilot whales by the Faroese.”
FAROE ISLANDS? NO THANKS! @faroe_islands @seashepherd The Dolphins of Portofino 🐬 #portofino #SeaShepherd #grindstop pic.twitter.com/af9Qgr9QdU
— Portofino (@portofino) November 11, 2017
The images were taken during a ten-week period over the summer and that the images come from nine different hunts or “drives.” Sea Shepherd claims that the hunts resulted in the deaths of 198 Atlantic white-sided dolphins and 436 pilot whales.
And the government of the Faroe Islands wasn’t happy with the images; in a statement to Fox, they declared “Sea Shepherd representatives will go to any lengths to paint a negative picture of the Faroese whale hunt … they have chosen an easy target as whale drives in the Faroe Islands take place in the open for anyone to watch and document.”
The island chain has a long history of whaling, dating back to the 16th century — there are some records of whaling in the region that date back to 1587 and since 1709, the islanders have recorded every animal taken in one of their hunts, National Geographic reports. And the Faroese government works hard to keep up a decent appearance on their whaling tradition. On their website, they claim that the pilot whale population near their islands is nearly 100,000 strong but that they only bring in about 800 animals annually. They also state that whaling in the islands “has been regulated for centuries” and that “the hunt is to be conducted in such a way as to cause as little suffering to the whales as possible.”
Unlike the Japanese whaling community (that also has a centuries-long tradition), the Faroese don’t actually go out to sea and slaughter the animals in the water. Instead, they take powerboats to the area where the whales are swimming and chase them to the shore. Once the whales are on the beach, a group of men run through the gathering of animals and cut their necks and sever their spinal columns. The government and advocates of the practice claim that the whales die quickly and don’t suffer but critics say that’s not the case.
The government also stresses the community aspect of the hunt, telling Fox that “catches are shared largely without the exchange of money among the participants in a whale drive and the residents of the local district where they landed.” They also say “each whale provides the communities with several hundred kilos of meat and blubber–meat that otherwise had to be imported from abroad.”
Though the Faroe Islands are a part of Denmark, they are self-governing and are not part of the European Union, which has made whaling illegal.
