Operation Bloody Fjords Eyewitness Account: Team 3

📁 Archive Document — Historical Record

This article was first published when our charity's original name/branding as 'Sea Shepherd UK' prior to our name change on 18th May 2023 following the removal of Captain Paul Watson from Sea Shepherd entities worldwide (with the exception of the UK, France and Brazil).

Captain Paul Watson remains a member of our Board, and our charity continues to uphold its founding principles of non-violent direct action marine conservation.

This article and its contents are the property of the 'Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK' and forms part of our 21 year history.

Learn more at paulwatsonfoundation.uk/new-name

As part of our ongoing Operation Bloody Fjords campaign to end the slaughter of dolphins and pilot whales in the Danish Faroe Islands, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK coordinated ten weeks of covert land-based patrols from July to early September. Centrally coordinated by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK, the crews were based in six different Faroese towns covering 19 designated whaling bays. During the ten weeks our volunteer crew, who used their personal vacation time to blend in with other tourists, managed to document nine separate grindadráp. We are now sharing the personal accounts of six of these teams and the images they recorded, one each day for six days.

Team 3, based in Tórshavn, witnessed the Syðrugøta dolphin hunt on 25th July 2017 (16 white-sided dolphins killed

Team 3, based in Tórshavn, witnessed the Syðrugøta dolphin hunt on 25th July 2017 (16 white-sided dolphins killed)

"As we drove into Syðrugøta we knew we were in the right place, as the water was blood red. We continued towards the harbour and parked up, walked to the slipway where 16 Atlantic white-sided dolphins had already been slaughtered. They were lined up neatly in two rows, guts already spilled onto the concrete and spines severed. One thing I didn't expect was the stench of blood. A crowd had gathered, including small children who were poking the dolphins in the eyes while their parents watched. The grind foreman began measuring and numbering the carcasses while telling me these dolphins were split from a larger pod of 100+. The hunters then began to load some of the dolphins onto flatbed lorries, lifted by the fluke while intestines spilled out. The remaining dolphins started to be butchered; one hunter remarked how lucky we were to witness this as foreigners. We then followed a lorry about half a mile to a workshop which doubled as a butcher house. We tried to get photographs inside with a long lens but couldn't find a suitable angle. We decided to enter the building and ask to take pictures under the guise of marine biology students. The hunters were happy to oblige. We were told the meat would be sent to the local old people's home. We watched while the hunters hacked off the dolphins' heads and began to butcher them. I remarked to one hunter that the dolphins were Atlantic white-sided and he didn't know. He said, 'I don't know, it's a dolphin.' The meat was thrown into tubs full of water. The butchering process took about two hours while the hunters laughed and joked."

One of the 16 Atlantic white-sided dolphins killed on July 25th, 2017.

2017 has proved to be one of the worst years for the grindadráp since the mid-1990s, with 1,203 pilot whales and 488 dolphins killed during 24 individual hunts in the Danish Faroe Islands so far.

Check back tomorrow for the third report and images from Team 5.