The Truth Story: Whaling in the Faroe Islands

The Faroese authorities regulate it. Around 800 long-finned pilot whales have slaughtered annually. That is 1% of the entire whales.

The hunts, called grindadráp in Faroese, are non-commercial and are organized on a community level. Anyone who has a special training certificate on slaughtering a pilot whale with the spinal-cord lance can participate.

This was not necessary earlier, but because of constant criticism from animal welfare organizations, the Faroese people try to improve the slaughtering methods to make them more humane.

The Grind law was updated in 2015, where one of the regulations demanded that the whalers followed a course on how to slaughter a pilot whale with the spinal-cord lance. The police and Grindaformenn are allowed to remove people from the grind area.

The hunters first surround the pilot whales with a wide semicircle of boats. The boats then drive the pilot whales into a bay or to the bottom of a fjord.

Not all bays are certified, and the slaughter will only take place on a certified beach.