Whale Drive at Faroe Islands

267 pilot whales are driven up on the beach near Fuglefjord. The whales, that local residents see as a gift from God, are afterwards distributed free to citizens on the island Whaling in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic has been practiced since about the time of the first Norse settlements on the islands. The techniques used are intensely stressful and cruel. Entire family groups are rounded up out at sea by small motor boats and driven to the shore. Typically, once they are stranded in shallow water, blunt-ended metal hooks are inserted into their blowholes and used to drag the whales up the beach, where they are killed with a knife cut to their major blood vessels.

credit: carstenfonsdal