Cruise lines to stop visits to Faroes
Two major German cruise lines are to stop sending their ships to the Faroe Islands in protest over the bloody whale and dolphin hunts that take place there.
Hapag-Lloyd and AIDA cruise lines will now look for alternative destinations to send their vessels, a move that represents a massive blow to the islands, which depends on tourism revenue.
Every year in the Faroe Islands, a territory of Denmark, hundreds of pilot whales and other species including bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic white-sided dolphins and northern bottlenose whales, are hunted for their meat. 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.
”It is a shame that such a beautiful destination continues to be marred by the shadow of these bloody hunts,” said WDC drive hunt campaigner, Courtney Vail
