The Faroe Islands: What’s Happening, and How to Help

What Is the Grindadráp?

The grindadráp, or “the grind,” is a traditional hunt in the Faroe Islands — a self-governing Danish territory in the North Atlantic — dating back to roughly 800 CE. It targets long-finned pilot whales along with Atlantic white-sided dolphins and bottlenose dolphins. When a pod is spotted near shore, boats drive the animals into a bay, where they are beached and killed with a spinal lance intended to sever the spinal cord.

Unlike many whaling operations, the grind is not run by a commercial fleet on a fixed schedule — it happens opportunistically whenever a pod comes close enough to shore, which means it can happen with little warning throughout the summer and fall.

The Numbers

Roughly 900 pilot whales and dolphins are killed in the Faroe Islands in an average year. Over the past two decades, more than 20,000 dolphins and small whales have died in the hunts. The scale can be shocking in a single event: in September 2021, over 1,400 Atlantic white-sided dolphins were killed in a single day near Skálabotnur, a hunt so far outside historical norms that it drew condemnation even from within the Faroese hunting community and prompted the government to temporarily cap dolphin hunts.

Health and Legal Context

Faroese health authorities themselves now recommend against regularly eating pilot whale meat, since it carries elevated levels of mercury and other persistent organic pollutants — meaning the hunt persists more as cultural tradition than as a nutritional necessity. The Faroe Islands are not members of the European Union and set their own wildlife policy, which is part of why international pressure has had limited legal leverage.

What’s Being Done — and What You Can Do

Organizations working on this issue take a range of approaches, and reasonable people disagree about which is most effective:

• Direct pressure and documentation — Sea Shepherd has run long-term campaigns (including its “Grindstop” operations) documenting hunts and pushing for an end to the practice.
• Diplomatic and cultural engagement — Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) argues that durable change is more likely to come from building local Faroese appreciation for pilot whales as intelligent, sentient beings, rather than from external condemnation alone, which can entrench cultural defensiveness.
• Consumer and travel pressure — Cruise lines and tour operators have faced public campaigns asking them to reconsider Faroese port calls during hunt season; travelers can choose to support this pressure by voicing concerns directly to operators.
• Support the organizations working the issue — stopthegrind.org and WDC’s Faroe Islands campaign both track developments and offer concrete ways to get involved, from petitions to donations.
• Stay informed and speak up — Public attention has moved the needle before: the 2021 dolphin hunt led directly to a temporary Faroese government cap on dolphin kills. Sustained visibility matters.

Whatever the path forward, the grindadráp remains one of the largest deliberate hunts of small whales and dolphins left anywhere in the world — and one of the clearest examples of why global attention to whale conservation still matters.