On our bus ride to Kirkjuburuirn we spotted a group of boats spread out in an arc across the mouth of a bay. A woman on the bus explained that we were seeing a pilot whale hunt. The boats were herding the whale to the beach where they would be stranded. The hunters then go shore and cut the whale's throats. She then smiled and said, "free meat tonight".
She also explained the unexpected driver change our bus made an on our ride out, saying that he was going to participate in the hunt.
We were appropriately shocked by this, but it quickly left our thoughts when we arrived at Kirkjuburuirn.
Our return ride brought us back to our berth in the commercial section of the harbor only to discover that we were in the midst of the place were the whale corpses were being landed, inventoried and the butchering was started.
There were rows and rows of dead pilot whales layed out on the pavement with more being pulled out of the water in twos and threes as we stared in horror. Whale blood was all over the ground and soaking into our docking lines. The air smelled of blood and death.
Juxtapositioned against this were families in a festive mood, children rolling around and over the whale corpse while the corpses were having numbers cut into their skin and rectangular openings being cut into their bellies with their guts spilling on to the ground.
We stopped counting at 200 whales. An entire whale community.
No comments:
Post a Comment