I received an email recently from a friend with widely circulated photos of a horrific dolphin slaughter in the Faroe Islands of Denmark. (The Faroe Islands, located about 250 miles north of Scotland, are about half way between Denmark and Iceland, in other words, they are one very inhospitable place, freezing cold, about as different from Hawaii as one can imagine.)
Every year nearly a thousand Calderon dolphins, a type of pilot whale, are brutally hacked to death in a shallow bay as a sort of annual festival for the islanders. The main participants in this killing are young teens; the cruel and heartless killing of these beautiful dolphins is a supposed “right of passage” ceremony ushering in manhood. I am not sure how cruelly killing defenseless and beautiful creatures proves one’s manhood, but somehow or other this has become the islander’s tradition.
Whenever dolphins are spotted close to shore, they are herded into the shallows by boats where they are then savagely hacked once, twice or even three or more times with thick hooks (see the picture). The dolphins produce a grim sound similar to the cry of a new born child; but their cries go unheeded as they suffer immensely and die a slow and painful death in their own blood.
From the photos it appears that this is a big celebration of death and slaughter, in which everyone is participating in one way or another, either doing the killing, or supporting it like a spectator at some sports event. A little like the way Romans cheered on gladiators, or the Spaniards cheer on bullfighters.
The Calderon dolphin is listed as “Threatened” by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources).
I used to live in the beautiful Byron Bay area of northern New South Wales, in Australia. I would regularly surf a remote point break called Broken Head. Oftentimes, close to sunset, dolphins would come and share the waves; on occasion there would be two or three dolphins riding the same wave with me. Dolphins are intelligent and graceful creatures and definitely should be respected and protected, not hacked to death as spectator sport.
A petition is circulating on the Internet asking for signatures to deplore this barbaric behavior. Please visit this site, the link is in the footnotes to this post, and sign the petition.