According to a new study, more than 15,000 dolphins have been killed by villagers in the Solomon Islands from 1976 to 2013 for their teeth. Researchers said that the teeth are used as currency or personal ornamentation.

Residents in the village of Fanalei have killed over 1600 dolphins alone in 2013 and the extracted teeth are valued at 70 cents apiece. According to the researchers, the traditional hunting method includes up to thirty canoes driving dolphins to shore, where they are killed.

Such hunts have been continuing sporadically since the early histories of the villages. There was a brief respite in 2010, at that time villagers were paid by the Earth Island Institute to stop but the agreement deteriorated in 2013 and 1,000 dolphins were killed.

According to the researchers, dolphins are not classified as endangered. The scientists and conservation activists are concern about the recovery of these dolphin hunts as they claim far more dolphin lives than hunts in Japan and elsewhere. The researchers said that the dolphins mostly killed for their teeth, a local currency frequently used to pay dowries for brides and for ceremonial jewellery.

Environmentalists and government has recently put efforts to remove the practice, but still the local price of a dolphin tooth increased from the equivalent of 14 US cents in 2004 to about 70 US cents in 2013.

"The large number of dolphins killed and the apparent incentive for future hunting offered by the increasing commercial value of teeth highlight an urgent need to monitor hunts and assess the abundance and trends in local populations", said the report, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.