According to media reports and animal rights activists, around 100 dolphins have been killed in the Faroe Islands. The animals were sighted in the Skálafjord on Friday and killed in the morning hours, Faroese radio reported.
The killing went smoothly. According to the whale and dolphin protection organization WDC, this time around 100 bottlenose dolphins were killed.
For the first time, a special lance was used with which the death of the dolphins should be brought about more quickly. According to the WDC, experts see this critically.
According to the animal protection organization Pro Wildlife, this dolphin hunt is unusual and shocking for several reasons, including because it is a species of dolphin that has only ever been caught sporadically in the Faroe Islands and has not been caught at all for over ten years.
Only recently, the Faroese government announced the introduction of a catch quota for hunting white-sided dolphins. According to this, a maximum of 500 of these specimens may be caught per year in 2022 and 2023.
The background to the move is a dolphin hunt that got out of hand, in which 1,423 Atlantic white-sided dolphins were driven into the Skálafjord and killed last late summer. This had caused international criticism.
Whaling (‘grindadráp’) is a centuries-old tradition on the Danish Kingdom-owned but largely autonomous islands in the North Atlantic. Mainly pilot whales are killed, but sometimes also dolphins.
