The Bay of Biscay, stretching from the tip of Brittany, in western France, to the north of Spain, is a major fishing zone in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s also home to around 200,000 dolphins.
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00:00We put everything on the back of the fishermen, but it's not with the amount of dolphins this year, I think we should have caught one.
00:07That's not what's going to decimate the dolphin population.
00:10I am in one of the fishing ports of the Gulf of Gascony, in the west of France, and this winter, the fishermen are so angry.
00:17For the second consecutive year, boats of more than 8 meters, practicing certain types of net fishing, must remain anchored for a month.
00:24A measure imposed by the French state and since this year by the European Union.
00:29Objective, protect dolphins and small marine mammals from accidental captures by fishermen.
00:35Contested by them, the ban is deemed essential by environmental advocates.
00:46Located in the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Gascony extends from the tip of Brittany in France to the north of Spain.
00:53It houses many species of marine mammals, including some 200,000 dolphins.
00:58These are the most exposed to accidental captures by fishermen.
01:02According to scientific organizations, it has killed between 5,000 and 10,000 dolphins each year in the area since 2016.
01:10A worrying mortality, given the low reproduction rate of dolphins.
01:14A birth every 3 to 6 years for about 30 years of life.
01:20Reducing the impact of fishing on marine ecosystems is one of the commitments of the European fishing policy.
01:27The Habitat Directive also prohibits any form of deliberate capture or intentional killing of dolphins.
01:34Regulation 812-2004, on the other hand, imposes measures such as acoustic devices or surveillance programs on fishing boats to reduce accidental catches.
01:46The European Commission recently confirmed the ban on fishing made on French and foreign ships over 8 meters in the Gulf of Gascony
01:55from January 22 to February 20, 2025.
02:07I am in Audierne, a small fishing harbour in the Department of the Finistère in the Brittany region in France.
02:13A very impacted area by a ban on fishing imposed on boats over 8 meters in the Gulf of Gascony.
02:20A measure wanted by France and the European Union.
02:26Sébastien Biolchini is among the hundreds of fishermen forced to put their nets away from January 22 to February 20.
02:34A few days after the ban, he tries to multiply the outings despite the bad weather.
02:40The night was very hard, especially since we didn't have much fishing today.
02:44So you see, the fisherman doesn't have an appointment, knowing that with the bad weather we couldn't work all month.
02:50So we had to try to make as many days as possible to have a small salary at the end of the month.
02:56In addition to the financial impact of the ban on fishing, everyone here fears a snowball effect on the whole local economy.
03:06We are a small harbour where practically 60% of the fleet is impacted by this ban on fishing.
03:12This means that the harbour loses a lot because there are no more boats, so there is no life at all on the harbour.
03:21So it impacts the whole territory rather than only the sailors.
03:27Putting 300 or 400 boats on the ground, it doesn't stop at the harbour.
03:31It's a whole sector that is fragilized.
03:33It's the harbour workers here who are out of work.
03:38It's the logistics of transport.
03:40It's all the workshops of the naval repair companies that are all stopped.
03:44The sailors are normally compensated, but the others are not.
03:47And the risk in the long run is that the whole sector is broken.
03:50The forced shutdown is all the less accepted by the fishermen, who are trying to limit the accidental captures of dolphins.
03:56I'll show you. The nets are right there.
03:59Under the auspices of a European program, all the sailors in the area have equipped themselves with deflection systems,
04:04such as these reflectors, which allow the dolphins to locate the nets,
04:07or these probes, which emit ultrasonic waves from the hull of the boat.
04:11Efforts that are insufficiently taken into account, says Sébastien,
04:15so that the fishing stop won't solve the problem.
04:19It's not with the quantity of dolphins this year.
04:21I think we should have prevented one.
04:23So that's not what's going to decimate the population of dolphins.
04:27At the same time, with global warming, we don't know if they're getting closer to the coast or if they've changed their traffic.
04:34And what's more than before, it's easy to blame the fishermen.
04:37And that's the only solution they've found.
04:40The compensation provided by the state to compensate for the losses caused by the shutdown,
04:45up to 85% of the fishermen's turnover, does not reassure Sébastien.
04:52Last year, after the dolphin shutdown, we also had a bad time,
04:56so we couldn't go back to sea right away.
04:59Despite the damage, we estimate a loss of 20-30% of the turnover.
05:04I have no visibility over 3, 5, 10 years.
05:07So it would be out of the question to make a big investment in the current state of things.
05:12Even if we manage to win our costs, we are never safe.
05:16Because always taxpayers, precisely, French and European decisions.
05:20I would like to be able to work a little more serenely on the duration.
05:29The dolphin shutdowns in the Gulf of Gascogne have multiplied in recent years.
05:35How do we explain it?
05:37And are the temporary fishing interruptions natural to protect them?
05:41I asked the French Research Institute on the Ifremer Ocean.
05:45Since about 2016, it's true that we've seen significant increases in the number of shutdowns.
05:51Fishing hasn't changed that much in terms of number of boats, number of days at sea.
05:57But what we see is that the dolphins are closer to the coast.
06:01They are more easily in the same place at the same time as the fishermen.
06:06Because we find them, in particular, in the areas of interaction with the small pelagic fish.
06:11Anchovies, sardines, which is what makes up most of the dolphin food.
06:16And which is also part of the food of the fish that are targeted by the fishermen at the same time.
06:23We try to link this, among other things, with climate change analysis.
06:27Which means that, overall, dolphins also change their behavior.
06:31And so the interactions are not at all the same as what we knew before.
06:35So how do we assess the effectiveness of the last temporary fishing shutdown?
06:40In 2024, very different things happened than in previous years.
06:46So, indeed, overall, we can consider that we have fewer failures than in previous years.
06:51We have fewer apparent traces of capture on the animals that failed.
06:57And these are things that we observed not only during the shutdown, but also before and after.
07:04The shutdown has undoubtedly played a role.
07:07There are undoubtedly other factors that also come into play.
07:10Because otherwise we wouldn't necessarily be able to explain what happened before, what happened after.
07:14In a year's time, it's premature to believe that we can answer all the questions about efficiency.
07:20The example of dolphins in the Gulf of Gascony is really the heart of these difficult compromises
07:26between exploitation and protection.
07:29And so all these issues of saying how, as humanity, we feed ourselves without destroying ourselves.
07:36It's really all this issue of sustainable fishing.
07:39The solutions are not simple.
07:41They necessarily take time to emerge.
07:43And they are often imperfect.
07:45But these are work in the right direction.
07:48The temporary ban on fishing in the Gulf of Gascony must be repealed in 2026.