Biologists and animal rights activists have called for a temporary halt to fishing off the French Atlantic coast as hundreds of fatally injured dolphins wash up on the nation's beaches.
Faced with this winter's unusually high number of injured dolphins, the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) has called on French President;Emmanuel Macron to intervene.
"The time has come to do our utmost to save dolphins from mistreatment, even extinction," says Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, president of the LPO, in an open letter to the French leader.
"We call on you to suspend immediately and for several weeks the types of fishing which are capturing dolphins in the Bay of Biscay between France and Spain.
"This dramatic situation is even less acceptable given that it is avoidable," Bougrain-Dubourg added.
Huge additional number of deaths
The Pelagis ocean observatory has reported a surge in dolphin deaths on the Atlantic coast, with 127 common dolphins washed up in January alone -- up from 73 in the same month last year.
The rate of dolphin deaths usually increases later in the year, during the February-March coastal feeding season that brings the marine mammals closer to fishing vessels chasing hake and sea bass.
This year the increase in finds is "especially early", Pelagis says
Over the whole of 2022, 669 dolphins washed up on French shores, down from 1,299 in 2020.
Scientists believe that more than 80 percent of dead dolphins sink or decompose at sea rather than washing ashore, suggesting the real number of deaths is far higher, perhaps as many as 11,000 per year.
Of the washed-up dolphins, most present signs of having been caught in fishing equipment, Pelagis said, with the LPO singling out "slices in the tail fins and clear traces of nets" on their skin.
Time wasting half-measures
The International Council for Marine Exploration (CIEM), a scientific body that tracks North Atlantic ecosystems, has for years urged a winter pause for some indiscriminate fishing techniques, meeting fierce resistance from industrial fishermen.
After two years of pressure from the European Commission and under pressure from activists, Paris has so far offered an eight-point plan with technical measures, stopping far short of an outright ban.
Measures include a voluntary observer scheme aboard fishing vessels, satellite tracking and fitting trawlers with acoustic repellent devices that drive the dolphins away.
Many fishing ships are already fitted with the devices in a "large-scale experiment" to test their effectiveness, the government said.
But the LPO denounced the government moves as "half-measures... that will change nothing and cost us precious time".
Environmentalist group Sea Shepherd said the repellent devices "create huge exclusion zones in dolphins' feeding grounds" that risk cutting them off from needed nourishment.
Paris has not completely closed the door to temporary bans, suggesting "time- and space-limited closures" to fishing could be tested in the Bay of Biscay in winter 2024-25 "if there are no satisfactory results in reducing accidental" netting of dolphins.
Sea Shepherd filed a criminal complaint on 16 January, calling for legal action against persons unknown over the failure to intervene.
