The waters off the coast of the Faroe Islands literally ran red on the night of September 12, filled with the blood of almost 1,500 dolphins that were mercilessly chased, cornered, and then brutally stabbed to death.
Sign the petition and demand that the European Union outlaw this bloody, unsustainable, cruel tradition!
That Sunday evening, boats surrounded the terrified, fleeing, thrashing pod of dolphins. They chased them into shallow enough water so that their horrible work could begin, then they took out their knives and began. Dolphins were stabbed but left alive to bleed out, becoming colder and colder as they lost blood, shivering in anguish. Some of their necks were cut open so that they would bleed and choke to death. Some dolphins' spines were slashed, leaving them alive but unable to move as they painfully died. Families of dolphins, social and bonded, died alongside each other, calves and adults alike, as cruel adult humans murdered them and let their own children laugh and play nearby. By the end, 1,428 dolphins were dead.
The Faroe Islands make up an autonomous region in the Kingdom of Denmark, and these hunts, known as "the grind" or Grindadrap in Faroese, began in the 9th century when our oceans had not yet been pillaged of nearly all their resources and whaling still happened on a small, sustainable scale to support small communities of people. But in recent history, these hunts have been criticized as needless, cruel, and totally unsustainable by animal rights activists.
And this record high death toll has given even some supporters of the hunt pause. That's how vast the cruel slaughter was -- even the chairman of the Faroese Whalers Association said, "It was a big mistake."
Apparently, when the roundup started, they thought the pod they were going to brutally murder was only 200 dolphins. But they went on to beach, stab, and slice over 1,400 innocent dolphins -- a slaughter that some experts are saying could be too large for the white-sided dolphin population to bounce back from. Animal welfare activists also wonder if so much meat could be processed in time to actually be used, instead discarded like trash, these animals' deaths all for nothing.
The foreman of the Grindadrap hadn't even approved this event because there were not enough people available to make such a large slaughter quick and efficient enough to be humane -- that means that more dolphins than ever died, and more suffering than ever happened.
And yet it was all technically legal. Obviously, this event is no longer necessary, appropriate, or able to be regulated in a way where animals don't suffer. Tell the EU to step in, and shut down the Grindadrap for good!