fishing will be banned for one month on the Atlantic coast

The order was expected. After a decision by the Council of State, which had been contacted by NGOs, France established on Tuesday October 24 a one-month fishing ban period, accompanied by numerous exemptions. Deeming the measures taken so far insufficient, the highest French administrative court ordered the government in March 2023 to close certain fishing zones in the Atlantic “in order to limit the number of deaths of common dolphins, bottlenose dolphins and harbor porpoises, victims of accidental capture during fishing operations”.

According to the decree published in the Official Journal, the fishing ban period concerns the period from January 22 to February 20, from 2024 to 2026. It is “the first time” what is imposed “large spatio-temporal closure of fishing activity” to combat massive strandings of cetaceans in “the period known to have the most captures”underlines the government in a press release.

The Council of State could again be seized

However, the new text does not satisfy NGOs any more. The France nature environment association criticizes “a bogus reading of the scientific recommendations”. She estimates that limiting the closure to just one month could reduce accidental dolphin catches by 17% compared to 44%, if the deadline was extended to three months. The League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) has already announced its intention to refer the matter to the Council of State again.

The Pelagis observatory recorded 1,380 strandings of small cetaceans between December and April on the Atlantic coast, while a majority of the corpses sank or were carried offshore and therefore never reached the beaches. According to the organization, the dolphin population in the Bay of Biscay was estimated at around 200,000 individuals in 2011-12.