Faroe Islands Promises To Limit Slaughter After More Than 1,400 Dolphins Killed In Single Day

* Warning, contains imagery some may find upsetting*

An 'unusually large' catch of dolphins last year was shocking to locals and even attracted ire from groups that participated in the slaughter.

Now, officials have released a statement proposing a slaughter limit that would whittle the amount of dolphins the islanders could kill down to 500 a year, and that the killing of so many dolphins the previous year was unlikely to be sustainable in the long-term.

A review into the mass slaughter had been ordered in February after a petition calling for a ban on a traditional practice linked to the slaughter gained more than a million signatures.

Some on the Faroe Islands still eat the meat of whales and dolphins, though this practice is becoming increasingly rare.

British supermarkets have been urged to stop selling seafood caught in the Faroe Islands as a way of protesting the annual slaughter of hundreds of dolphins.

You might be wondering why the Faroe Islands have killed so many dolphins, and it all has something to do with a longstanding tradition known as 'grindadrap'.

For more than 800 years the tradition has seen hunters living on the islands drive groups of whales and dolphins onto the island shore where they are killed, shedding so much blood it turns the tides red.

The Faroese government has indicated that while it will try and impose limits on the number of dolphins killed, it will not be bringing an end to the bloody tradition.

"An annual catch limit of 500 white-sided dolphins has now been proposed by the Ministry of Fisheries on a provisional basis for 2022 and 2023,” they said.

“Aspects of that catch [2021] were not satisfactory, in particular the unusually large number of dolphins killed. This made procedures difficult to manage and is unlikely to be a sustainable level of catch on a long-term annual basis."

Claiming the practice was an 'important supplement to the livelihoods of Faroe Islanders', their government said they'd look at making it a sustainable tradition instead.

They said: "The Government of the Faroe Islands continues to base its policies and management measures on the right and responsibility of the Faroese people to utilise the resources of the sea sustainably.

"This also includes marine animals, such as pilot whales and dolphins."