A correspondent for France Nature Environnement, on the Ile de Ré.

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YN Productions - The kitchen with images

  • More and more dolphin corpses are washing up on the French Atlantic coast.

  • The majority were victims of offshore fishing nets.

  • Director Jean-Roch Meslin gives voice to the various actors in his documentary broadcast on France 3.

Every winter, hundreds of dolphins wash up on the French Atlantic coasts, especially in Vendée and Charente-Maritime.

Most died of suffocation in fishing nets off the coast as they chased schools of fish.

It is by noting himself the more and more regular presence of these cetacean corpses on the beaches of the island of Ré, where he resides, that Jean-Roch Meslin, director, wanted to give the speak to the actors in a documentary entitled Dauphins sous surveillance.

The Pelagis scientific observatory, environmental associations, but also fishermen, try in turn to decipher this complex tragedy in a 52-minute broadcast from this Monday evening on France 3 Pays-de-la-Loire *.

Interview.

While making this documentary, were you surprised by the scale of the phenomenon?

Yes.

The stranding figures have been on the rise for 4-5 years now.

It is not me who says it but the Pelagis observatory which keeps precise statistics on strandings, which carries out autopsies of animals.

We are around 1,200 stranded dolphins per year.

But scientists estimate that for a dolphin found on our coasts there are ten deaths that we will not see.

So we are around 10,000 dolphins killed per year.

It is considerable.

We discover in the documentary that the problem is however not new ...

Dolphins stranded on our beaches have been going on for 30 years.

We talked about it shortly before.

It is the images disseminated on social networks, the NGOs which communicated by these means, which made it possible to sensitize the general public.

And the media followed.

We generally talk about accidental capture by fishermen.

But this term is disputed.

Why ?

For some NGOs, including France Nature Environnement, capture is structural because it is linked to certain fishing practices.

Every year we know that there will be dolphins captured at the same time, generally in winter.

Of course, this is accidental because the catch of dolphins is not wanted by fishermen, but it is predictable.

A dolphin stranded in Vendée.

- YN Productions - The kitchen with images

What is your view on this singled out profession?

The subject is complex.

First, it does not concern all fishing techniques, only a few.

Secondly, because there are a lot of fishermen who suffer from the situation.

20-30 years ago, the public had a lot of respect for these people and this is less and less the case with the story of dolphins.

Some fishermen don't want that to change because they've always worked like this.

But others, especially young people, would like us to find an effective solution and seem ready to play the game. We still need to give them the means.

The documentary evokes several avenues ...

There are pingers which are developed to scare away dolphins approaching pelagic nets.

This technique has been known since the 2000s. The tests carried out in Brittany gave results but, for financial reasons, the boats were not equipped.

There is a new phase of experimentation which has just been launched with new, more efficient pingers that consume less energy.

There are also new reflector techniques which pursue the same objective but for gill boats.

The problem is the cost of deployment.

Without the involvement of the State and of Europe, it seems complicated.

Is the French State sufficiently involved in this matter?

His absence marked me while making this documentary.

I have the impression that he does not measure at all the magnitude of what is going on.

You don't see any control at sea, for example.

The European Commission asked France this summer to act against catches and we do not see a big measure.

The NGOs proposed several scenarios, such as the closure of fishing for two weeks in winter in the Bay of Biscay: the fishermen were against it and the Minister of Fisheries opposed it.

“It is urgent to radically change course,” concludes your documentary.

Can we be optimistic?

I do not know.

I am not sure.

With Covid and Brexit, the economic context is difficult.

But the consumer has a role to play in this story.

Buying fish all year round at any time is not neutral.

The consumer can choose to buy fish caught in good conditions, in a quest for sustainable fishing.

It is a "collective responsibility" say several speakers of the documentary.

I really believe it.

We are all concerned.

* Dolphins under surveillance, at 11:25 p.m. Monday October 26.

Also to be seen in replay for 30 days.

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