Whale slaughter setback

A brutal scene played out in the Danish Faeroe Islands recently when 236 pilot whales were slaughtered using a method called “the grind,” which involves stranding pods of whales in coves and then severing their spinal cords with knives, according to a Sea Shepherd Conservation Society press release.

Footage of the July 19 slaughters was caught on tape by the SSCS’s Peter Hammarstedt, first mate of the Bob Barker, who had been living undercover in the islands, posing as a Swedish film student at the time of the killings. Hammarstedt documented the murder of the whales, which ranged from unborn fetuses that were cut out of whales and left on the dock, to a full-grown whale that had six chops taken to her head.

Denmark is a signatory to the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, which classifies pilot whales as “strictly protected.”