The hunt
In accordance with the regulations, men gather on the shore to kill the beached whales, here in the town Vágur on Suðuroy, June 28, 2004.
Whale hunting equipment is legally restricted to hooks, ropes, and assessing-poles for measurement. A boat that has been equipped in such a manner is a pilot whale boat. The pilot whale boat is not a traditional small Faroese rowing boat, neither is it a vehicle used by the coastal navigation, and it does not include the modern Faroese factory fleet. A pilot whale boat simply describes the temporary condition of a small boat during a hunt, which is otherwise used for line fishery or leisure purposes.
When the whalers have met the requirements specified above, the pilot whales can be driven. Whale drives only take place when a school of whales is sighted close to land, and when sea and weather conditions make them possible. The whaling regulations specify how the school of whales is to be driven ashore. The drive itself works by surrounding the pilot whales with a wide semicircle of boats. On the whaling-foremans signal, stones attached to lines are thrown into the water behind the pilot whales, thus the boats drive the whales towards an authorised beach or fjord, where the whales then beach themselves. It is not permitted to take whales on the ocean-side of the rope. A pilot whale drive is always under supervision of local authorities.
The pilot whales that are not beached were often stabbed in the blubber with a sharp hook, called a gaff (in Faroese sóknarongul), and then pulled ashore. But, after allegations of animal cruelty, the Faroese whalers started using blunt gaffs (in Faroese blásturongul) to pull the whales ashore by their blowholes. Today, the ordinary gaff is only being used to pull killed whales ashore. The blunt gaff became generally accepted since its invention in 1993, and it is not only more effective, but it is also more humane by comparison to the other gaff. However, anti-whaling groups such as Greenpeace and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) claim that the partial blocking and irritation of the airway hurts and panics the animal.
Furthermore, in 1985 the Faroe Islands outlawed the use of spears and harpoons in the hunt, as it considers these weapons to be unnecessarily cruel to animals.
Once ashore the pilot whale is killed by cutting the dorsal area through to the spinal cord with a special whaling knife, a grindaknívur. Given the circumstances during a pilot whale hunt, the whaling knife is considered the safest and most effective equipment with which to kill the whales. Naturally since the whales are killed manually death cannot, by definition, be instantaneous. The length it takes for a whale to die varies between a few seconds to a few minutes, with the average time being 30 seconds.
During the cut of a pilot whale's spine, their main arteries also get cut. Because of this the surrounding sea tends to turn a bloody red. This vivid imagery is often used by anti-whaling groups in their campaigns against the hunt. These images of a blood red sea can often have a shocking effect on bystanders.
Since harpoons, spears and firearms are prohibited, the whalers must be on the shoreline of the water and kill each individual whale.
Ólavur Sjúrðaberg, the chairman of the Faroese Pilot Whaler’s Association, describes the pilot whale hunt in such a way: "I'm sure that no one who kills his own animals for food is unmoved by what he does. You want it done as quickly and with as little suffering as possible for the animal."
