More than 1,400 dolphins have been killed off the coast of the Faroe Islands in a single day, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said, as part of the Danish territory's century-old traditional Grindadrap hunt.
The US-based NGO said on Sunday (September 12) that the slaughter of 1428 Atlantic white-sided dolphins is considered to be the largest single hunt of cetaceans ever recorded worldwide.
The annual dolphin drive, when several hundred pilot whales are slaughtered for their meat and blubber, is part of a 1,000-year-old tradition in the North Atlantic archipelago, reports Reuters.
This year the number of mammals slaughtered prompted an outcry from animal rights groups for the excessive killing, producing "more dolphin meat from this hunt than anyone wants to take," Sea Shepherds said in a press release.