The Grind – Whaling In the Faroe Islands

There’s not much agriculture in the Faroe Islands, an archipelago in the North Atlantic, roughly equidistant from Norway, Iceland, and Scotland. Aside from the sheep that freely roam the fjords and a few root vegetables, the Faroese have always relied on the surrounding sea as a source of fish, seabirds, and the pilot whales they slaughter in a hunt known as the grindadráp, or grind. "Grind,” which rhymes with wind, is Faroese for pilot whale, and can refer to the event of the whale slaughter, the whale meat, or the whales themselves. Hunting whales for food is a tradition as old as the islands have been inhabited. But in the past few decades, animal activists have taken issue with the grind, despite Faroese insistence that it is sustainable and humane. Motherboard visited the Faroe Islands to see a grind first hand as the Faroese defend their way of life against pressure from a visiting Sea Shepherd operation.