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A hunt organized by hunters in coastal town of Taiji every year round up dolphins and herd them into cove for making their meat. According to conservation group Sea Shepherds, this year the hunt has left 41 bottlenose dolphins dead. 

The group also said as many 130 additional dolphins were driven into cove and then sent back out to sea suffering injuries that might prove fatal.

Associated celebrities have denounced this year's hunt. U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy expressed her deep concerns for the "the inhumaneness of drive-hunt dolphin killing," reported Bloomberg.

Yoko Ono has sent an open letter to the hunters of Taji village in Japan pleading them to avoid hunt as it was developing anti-Japanese sentiment worldwide. "Please consider the safety of the future of Japan, surrounded by many powerful countries which are always looking for the chance to weaken the power of our country," she wrote, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. "At this very politically sensitive time, the hunt will make the children of the world hate the Japanese."

Apart from the Dolphin hunt, Japan also organizes annual whale hunt. Strangely, Japan government itself gives permission every year to hunters to kill about 1,000 whales. The agreement made in 1946 allowed governments to grant "any of its nationals a special permit authorizing that national to kill, take and treat whales for purposes of scientific research."

Recently, Australian government took Japan to the International Court of Justice, accusing that the country no longer has permission to conduct its whale hunter the guise or research. 

"Japan's continued pursuit of a large-scale program of whaling under the Second Phase of its Japanese Whale Research Program under Special Permit in the Antarctic ('JARPA II') is in breach of obligations assumed by Japan under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling ('ICRW'), as well as its other international obligations for the preservation of marine mammals and the marine environment," Australian government said, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.