the Sea Shepherd association denounces “impunity at sea” and calls for “cameras on board boats”

“We are calling for mandatory on-board cameras on board fishing boats”launches Wednesday 25 January on franceinfo Lamya Essemlali, president of the French branch of Sea Shepherd, faced with the excess mortality of dolphins, stranded on the French coasts.

The NGO also pleads for “Spatio-temporal closures, i.e. closing fishing areas sensitive to fishing gear known to catch dolphins”. If these closures are decided, Lamya Essemlali wishes that the fishermen who “will not go fishing during certain periods are compensated”.

Strandings are just the tip of the iceberg

Lamya Essemlali relays the data established by the CNRS Pelagis observatory. According to this observatory based in La Rochelle, since the beginning of the year, nearly “300 small cetaceans, 90% of which are dolphins”, were found stranded on the coasts of the Atlantic coast. Scientists claim to have observed traces of capture in fishing gear on these animals. But Lamya Essemlali assures that these strandings represent the tip of the iceberg : “The overwhelming majority of dead dolphins sank at sea”she says.

“Dolphins are gutted and disemboweled so that the carcasses sink and do not end up on the beaches where they become evidence of the crime.”

Lamya Essemlali

at franceinfo

Lamya Essemlali denounces the fishing practices which consist in “deploy thousands of kilometers of non-selective fishing nets in the habitable zone of dolphins that get caught in its nets”. These cetaceans “can’t come to the surface to breathe so they die of asphyxiation”, deplores the president of Sea Shepherd France. She also accuses some fishermen of not declaring the dolphins caught, when they have a legal obligation to do so.

None of the complaints filed were successful

To denounce this situation, the Sea Shepherd association filed a complaint against X for mutilation of protected species but also “for non-declaration of catches”. Lamya Essemlali specifies that at this stage these complaints have never succeeded, which would prove, according to her “the impunity that reigns at sea”. “There are very few checks and very few witnesses”, regrets the president of Sea Shepherd France. If Lamya Essemlali is in favor of a review of fishing methods, she also emphasizes the consumption of populations, whom she considers disconnected from what is happening at sea. “In fifty years, fish consumption has doubled, but we don’t ask ourselves the question of how the fish on our plate was caught, nor of the environmental and ethical impacts of this overconsumption”she is indignant.