The international organization Sea Shepherd denounces the throwing back into the sea of thousands of dead fish off the Bay of Biscay. Four factory ships are in the area, the organization suspects them of this theoretically prohibited act.
A veritable shoal of dead fish. The image is striking. The Sea Shepherd organization posted the photos on social media. The facts occurred about 300 kilometers off La Rochelle, in the Bay of Biscay in recent days.
According to the president of Sea Shepherd France, Lamya Essemlali, these are “bycatch”. That is to say that the four factory ships in the area brought up these fish, but they were not the ones they were looking for. They therefore threw them massively into the water so as not to clutter their holds. If the fact of fishing these fish, blue whiting, a priori, is legal, the fact of throwing them back into the water is not. The boats have the obligation to bring them back to port and declare them. Corn “it encumbers them and if these fish which are not targeted by the ship, then they reject them” Explain Lamya Essemlali. According to her, past contacts with the captains of the boats have yielded nothing “They all denied it, all four. But we are sure it’s one of the four”.
According to the departmental directorate of territories and the sea, of Charente-Maritime, the Ministry of the Sea is seized of this affair and will initiate an investigation. “It is typically part of the practices that are decried on the plundering of the oceans”we are told.
VIDEO – See images captured by Sea Shepherd
Among the four boats in the area is the Margiris, the second largest trawler in the world. It is a 142 meter and 6,200 ton boat, capable of handling more than 250 tons of fish per day. He has often been talked about and English ecologists accuse him of ruining the seabed. In Australia the fishermen and the inhabitants had mobilized against his arrival in the Australian islands, he had not been authorized to fish there. It is also strongly criticized by French fishermen.
Position of the Margiris (factory ship) on 03/02/2022
