French court rules ban on fishing to protect dolphins

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
20 Mar 2023 18:28

Sea Shepherd, alongside other environmental NGOs, file a legal complaint against the government for the dolphin and porpoise deaths that had been taking place.

An expert at the Observatoire Pelagis packs in a bag the body of a dolphin, which was found dead on a beach, in a cold room at their marine research station in La Rochelle, France, February 14, 2020. (Reuters)

The French government is to ban fishing in specific parts of the Atlantic Ocean to protect dolphins since hundreds of them have washed up dead on shores, ordered France's top administrative court on Monday.

The decision was taken by the highest court in government, days after an oceanographic institute reported a minimum of 910 dolphins had washed up on France's Atlantic shore ever since winter started.

Over 400 marine mammals were found along the coast within a single week which is an "unprecedented" number, the Pelagis oceanographic observatory based in the western city of La Rochelle said in a report on Friday.

Sea Shepherd, alongside other environmental NGOs, filed a legal complaint against the government for the dolphin and porpoise deaths that had been taking place. They blamed the government for not doing enough to protect these endangered species from the Bay of Biscay on the Atlantic coast.

Most of the dolphins that washed up on the shore had injuries from being caught on nets or other fishing equipment which may have harmed them.

Many of them died while looking for food on the coast and as such came to contact with fishing operations in February and March.

French government's thoughts

So far, the French government has held back from imposing fishing bans to solve the issue.

Instead, the government opted for solutions mitigating the impact of industrial fishing on dolphins. Some of which include using onboard cameras or installing loud sound equipment, which could drive the dolphins away.

However, instruments of "acoustic deterrence" installed on fishing boats "do not guarantee a favorable state of conservation for small cetacean species," as the State Council ruled on Monday.

The ruling also highlighted that both species [dolphins and porpoises] were threatened with extinction, at least on a regional level.

As such, the court gave the government six months to create non-fishing zones and to boost the monitoring for accidental capture of dolphins. The monitoring was, as mentioned by the government, still too approximate.