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The winds of recent weeks are conducive to strandings on the beaches.
This Tuesday, Sea Shepherd France filed a complaint against X after the stranding of five disembowelled dolphins, found on the beach of Grand Crohot on January 14.
On the coast of the Arcachon basin, as elsewhere in France, the phenomenon is unfortunately not new.
Hunting in the same place as fishermen, 3% to 5% of the 180,000 individuals in the Bay of Biscay die each year according to estimates by the Pelagis Institute.
"
A mortality that exceeds the sustainable threshold for the survival of the species
", underlines the Observatory of marine mammals and birds, which coordinates the national network of strandings.
Mutilated dolphins most often have their fins cut off or disembowelled.
Sometimes because we tried to "
remove them from the net
", sometimes "
because we wanted to sink their wreckage
", explains the president of Sea Shepherd France, Lamya Essemlali.
The activist denounces a scandal of which the French are only too little aware.
Obliged to alert when a dolphin is accidentally captured, a large number of fishermen refuse to do so for fear that new, more restrictive standards will be put in place.
Already 300 dolphins stranded on the Atlantic coast since Christmas
According to Sea Shepherd France, only their conscience currently prevents them from casting their nets if they see the mammal in the middle of the school of fish they are targeting.
An unprofitable moral choice far from being unanimous in the profession.
However, “
what happens at sea, stays at sea
”, deplores
Figaro
Lamya Essemlali, who would like to see all fishing gear equipped with cameras.
Rare are indeed the killed animals officially reported according to the activist.
A statement confirmed by the Pelagis Institute.
While 300 lifeless dolphins have washed up on the beaches of the Atlantic coast since Christmas, their carcasses are thousands to a thousand leagues under the sea.
Read alsoBiodiversity: new episode of dolphin mortality
To protect this biodiversity, the Sea Shepherd association is campaigning for the total ban on non-selective fishing boats (whose technology is incapable of differentiating a fish from a cetacean during capture, editor's note).
Failing that, she hopes at least the creation of an obligation to stay at the docks or not to anchor in the areas concerned at the most fatal times.
Spatiotemporal closures that would take place from September to March and August.
