Yesterday, a total of 19 pilot whales were killed on Húsavík, on the east of the Isle of Sandoy, Faroe Islands. This is the 19th grindadráp since the beginning of the summer.
During the hunt, pilot whales were driven by a flotilla of small boats into the bay before being killed by hand.
Once the boats drive an animal onto an approved beach, people on shore go in with knives and cut through the pilot whale’s neck and break the spinal cord.
The pod, estimated to be around 19 individuals, were forced to endure this painful death in the blood of their relatives.
Though the Feroese claim the kill is quick, the drive hunt can take hours to complete, an extremely long and stressful process for the whales.
It is the largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world on a part with the dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan.