Massacre of the dolphins

Daily Express - 8th January, 2005 (Nick Constable)

This weekend sees the start of another season on the golden beaches of southwest Britain. It won’t be advertised in family holiday brochures because it’s not what the visitors come to see. Just as well, so far as the hand-wringing, buck-passing bureaucrats of Brussels are concerned.

Welcome to the dead-dolphin spotting season; when most high tides deliver another horrific cargo of mutilated, decomposing, cetaceans to these shores.

Dolphins are those gentle, intelligent, animals which save surfers from sharks and swim playfully with disabled children. Today many will suffer agonising, unnecessary deaths – perhaps even as you’re reading this – as they slowly suffocate in the nets of a French or Scottish trawler. The fishing industry calls this ‘bycatch’. From our species to their’s, it’s a strange way of saying thanks.

However there are at last signs of a conservation fightback. The British government has banned the seabass fishing method of ‘pelagic’ or ‘pair’ trawling, mostly responsible for this carnage. Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw’s restrictions may extend only to the UK’s 12-mile territorial waters but it’s a start. Volunteers across the southwest are gathering evidence with every cetacean corpse they recover. And the big guns of the save-the-dolphin campaign - Greenpeace and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society – will next month unleash their biggest salvo yet on the European Commission.

The Commission could of course stop this slaughter. Yet despite a 10-year campaign by marine wildlife groups, pleas from the British government and mountains of scientific evidence – Brussels wants to have another think. So between now and January 2007 EC observers will be boarding 10% of pelagic trawlers over 45 ft long to check things out. So that’s all right then.

In the meantime, scores of volunteers from the Cornwall and Devon Wildlife Trusts will be searching beaches at high water today (Sat) looking for the bloated bodies of species such as the common dolphin (fast becoming uncommon) and harbour porpoise. Conservative estimates suggest they’ll find barely 5 per cent of the number actually killed. Conservationists say that’s partly because trawlermen chop up corpses or puncture them in the lungs, hoping they’ll sink out of sight. And out of mind.

To campaigners such as trawler owner Lindy Hingley the inaction of Europe’s politicians to this slaughter is among the greatest wildlife crimes of our age. Sometimes she so despairs that she aches to pack it all in - despite the MBE she won four years ago. ‘I feel hopeless, pointless and pathetic trying to take on Europe and the big commercial trawlers,’ she says. ‘You feel beaten down.

‘Then something will happen to keep me going. Last time it was a letter from a little girl. She sent five pounds pocket money with a note saying “please have this to save the dolphins”. That gets me up for the fight again.’

Around one third of the 800-plus dead dolphins dumped on Britain’s beaches each year are found in Devon and Cornwall. In 2002 the figure for both counties was 229; the following year it rose to 347 – a 51% increase. In 2004 there was a slight drop to 305, although reseachers believe this was largely down to a lack of westerly winds and autumn storms.

In fact scientists from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society believe dolphin wash-ups barely touch the truth. They estimate the pair-trawling death toll for common dolphins alone in the Celtic Sea (between Cornwall, Southern Ireland and South Wales) is 4000 a year from a total of 75,000. If that figure is right, says WDCS, the species is on course for a population collapse in these waters.

And what a way to die. According to a joint WDCS-Greenpeace investigation in 2002: ‘Evidence from bycaught animals shows signs of extreme struggling, including broken teeth and jaws, severed fins and flukes, cuts to the skin and internal bruising and muscular tearing.’ Prince Charles echoed this in an article last month. 'They are found with broken beaks and appalling wounds to their bodies, caused as they struggle to break free from nets intended for sea bass,’ he wrote.

He attacked EU claims that that there was ‘insufficient proof of damage’ and urged European ministers to accept Britain’s request to close the fishery. ‘One can hardly imagine what further proof of damage is necessary, or indeed that any citizens of the EU would want to consume bass caught in this appalling way.’

Lindy, who part owns the 90ft beam trawler Jacoba, based in Brixham, Devon, has been saying as much for 15 years. She formed her dolphin monitoring organisation Brixham Seawatch to expose the slaughter, relying on satellite tracking systems and intelligence from sympathetic skippers to track the pairs’ fleet from its arrival in early January through to April.

Currently around 30 French boats are working the Celtic Sea. There are around ten Scottish crews, although their boats are larger and driven by engines of 1200 to 2000 horsepower – typically three times more powerful than their French colleagues. This matters in terms of dolphin deaths. A large boat will tow faster – perhaps 8 - 10 knots – giving a trapped animal little chance of escape.

‘One of the difficulties we’ve had is persuading the public that these are not poor, humble fishermen scraping a living from the ocean,’ says Lindy. ‘British people have a very romantic view of the sea and sometimes that’s right. But these guys are in it for big bucks.

‘They invest fifty grand in their nets and fifty grand in their shoal-tracking sonar and they want a proper return, no dribs and drabs. They can make thirty grand a night and b******s to the dolphins and everyone who cares about them. There’s no room for a conscience in this job.’

Why, you ask, are the pair trawlers the bad guys? What about the beamers, dredgers, seiners, long-liners and gill-netters, to name a few of the common commercial fishing techniques used in the North East Atlantic. Surely they kill cetaceans too?

This is sometimes true, particularly of gill-nets (more of which later). But the problem with pair trawlers – so called because two boats tow a net strung between them - is that they hunt seabass in the same depth of ocean as common dolphins. That’s the ‘pelagic’ or mid-water layer where trawls can be completed at high speed with no risk of sea-bed snags.

Unfortunately for dolphins following the bass, neither is there any escape. The nets have a wide mouth supported by floats across a ‘head line’ and weighted at the sides and bottom. This tapers to a narrow tube called the extension piece and from there to the closed section – the ‘cod end’ – where fish are collected.

One 2003 study by scientists from the government’s Sea Mammal Research Unit tested bass nets with internal grids and escape hatches designed to steer a trapped dolphin to safety. It didn’t work. One pair of trawlers alone caught 160 cetaceans during the short trial. In each case suffocation would have taken five to ten minutes.

Gill nets present a different threat, particularly to harbour porpoises and bottlenose dolphins. These huge sheets of fine netting are suspended vertically in the water between a float and weight line. Fish swim in, get wedged by the gills and when cetaceans arrive for what looks an easy feed they also become trapped. Ninety one porpoises were found dead on Cornish beaches in the first six months of 2004. Although the estimated Celtic Sea population is, at 72,000, similar to common dolphins, one 1995 study suggests this has shrunk by 90% in fifty years.

EU regulations now demand that all fixed nets are equipped with sonic ‘pingers’, designed to scare cetaceans away. However some scientists fear these may also act like a dinner bell – luring porpoises in. Then there’s the risk of ‘ghost fishing’, where a gill net is torn away in a storm and floats around the Atlantic killing at random.

At least the British fishing industry is trying to reduce the impact of gill nets. The Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee has a scheme which alerts fishermen when porpoises have been sighted. Nets are then voluntarily hauled in. This may sound like a soft option but in truth most fishermen are themselves distressed by cetacean by-catch.

‘They can see there’s a problem,’ says Cornwall Wildlife Trust’s marine officer Ruth Williams, ‘and we’re pleased by their response. They know we’re not just a bunch of environmental greenies.

‘Pair trawling is a much harder issue. We want immediate closure of the bass fishery because the EC’s new regulations are too weak and long-winded. Very few observers are going to be placed on boats and it’s simply an excuse to delay taking action.

‘The British ban is a help but it hardly affects the European fleet at all. No one can tell the dolphins where to swim safely and the EC won’t do anything about the number of deaths unless there’s evidence that the population is at risk of extinction. By the time we get the overwhelming evidence needed to convince them it will be too late. How many more cetaceans have to die in the meantime?’

The notion that Brussels is playing politics with Britain’s marine wildlife angers many MPs. Andrew George, Lib Dem member for St Ives, says the European fisheries policy isn’t even consistent.

‘There is a better scientific case for a ban on pair-trawling compared with the situation five years ago when the Commission banned tuna drift nets – a decision which particularly affected Cornish fishermen,’ he says. ‘In my view the stumbling block isn’t the scientific evidence – it’s the political will of the European Commission which is weak.’

Some believe the bass trawlers are so arrogant that they are already flouting Britain’s 12-mile exclusion zone. Mr Bradshaw denies this, insisting that French ministers are supportive. However Gary Streeter, Conservative MP for South West Devon, isn’t so sure. ‘There is a good deal of evidence that this is going on,’ he says. ‘I have provided the minister with dates and locations and I think we need to have a much more rigorous investigation if we are to have confidence that this is being taken seriously.’

Demand for wild seabass has been fuelled by the growth of upmarket seafood restaurants and the success of TV shows fronted by celebrity chefs such as Rick Stein. But while Mr Stein’s Seafood Restaurant at Padstow, Cornwall, takes only handline-caught bass, many wholesalers aren’t quite so fussy.

Wild seabass has a price premium of 60% on farmed fish, retailing for around £7.30 per pound at current prices. A pair of trawlers landing a single 2,500-kilo haul of fish could expect to make well over £20,000 at markets in Plymouth or Newlyn. Yet, at the peak of the season, pair-trawlers catch so much that prices can collapse.

Rick Stein’s wholesaler, Matthew Stevens & Son of St Ives, says there are stories of entire hauls being pulped for fish meal. ‘We don’t need to trawl for seabass,’ he says. ‘There’s plenty of better quality line-caught bass around. But until the EU acts we’re all going to be victims of a greed culture. At the right time trawlers can make a lot of money very quickly.

‘The Scottish boats have come down because they’ve lost quota rights on their old fishing grounds in the North Sea. That’s added to the number of dolphins dying. Personally I want nothing to do with this business and I will not buy trawled bass.’

There are now fears that pair trawlers are both reducing bass stocks in UK waters and damaging the fragile rural economy. Malcolm Gilbert of St Ives, a leading member of the National Federation of Sea Anglers, says it is “crazy” for commercial UK bass landings worth £3 million to threaten a recreational bass angling industry worth £100 million.

Pleasure boat skippers running ‘sea safaris’ for tourists have also felt an impact. Captain Keith Leeves, of the Falmouth-based boat Orca Sea-Faris, now warns passengers that they may see dead dolphins. ‘If this happens it’s such a horrific traumatising and emotional experience,’ he says. ‘Everyone becomes sombre and often tearful.’

WDCS and Greenpeace are planning to turn up the heat on EU ministers next month by publishing a new investigation into the dolphin bycatch scandal. ‘For the last ten years we’ve been respectfully asking Europe to act on this,’ says WDCS Director of Science Mark Simmonds. ‘Nothing has changed. Dolphins keep dying. We need to close this fishery right now and the pressure will be mounting.’

For Lindy Hingley and the Wildlife Trust dolphin spotters it could be a busy weekend. The last two days (Jan 6th and 7th) have brought strong southwesterley gales which means that, in January, carcasses aren’t usually far behind. ‘I try not to think about what’s going on out there,’ says Lindy.

‘It will be sheer carnage. Thousands and thousands of dolphins will die while the European Commission looks the other way. Ministers should hang their heads in shame.’