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This dead right whale calf had injuries consistent with a vessel strike, including fresh propeller cuts on its back and head, broken ribs, and bruising. Photo: FWC/Tucker Joenz, NOAA Fisheries permit #18786

Emergency Right Whale Petition Seeks Overdue Protections From Vessel Strikes

This dead right whale calf had injuries consistent with a vessel strike, including fresh propeller...
Icelandic hunting vessels in port

Whaling boat kept in port after more hunt cruelty exposed

Icelandic whale hunting fleet One of the whaling boats involved in the latest hunts in...
Commerson's dolphin

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Commerson's dolphin Experts from a number of countries have mapped out a new set of...
Fin whale shot with two harpoons

Whalers kill just days after Iceland’s hunt suspension is lifted

Whalers in Iceland have claimed their first victims since the lifting (just a few days...

Scottish town cuts links with Faroes over cruel whale hunts

A Scottish town has severed its links with the Faroes in protest at the annual whale and dolphin hunts that take place on the islands.

Wick, in Caithness, has been twinned with Klaksvik (the second largest town on the Faroe Islands) for 20 years.  There have been regular exchange visits in that time but, in a letter sent this week, local councillors in Wick wrote to the mayor of Klaksvik to announce that they would be severing all contact as a result of the “cruel”, “barbaric” and “unnecessary” hunts (known locally as grinds).

Every year in the Faroe Islands, 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.