Every winter hundreds of dead dolphins and porpoises wash up on British and French beaches. Many have obvious injuries - broken beaks, torn flippers, bruising, and lacerations that tell the story of a prolonged death in fishing nets. The bodies of thousands of others never wash up and are claimed by the ocean.
The main culprit for the deaths is a fishing method called pair trawling most often used to catch sea bass during the winter. Huge nets (some can hold 10 jumbo jets) are towed in mid water at high speed by two fishing boats to catch fish such as sea bass, mackerel, horse mackerel, hake and in summer albacore tuna. However these fish are also the food of common dolphins and Atlantic white-sided dolphins in particular, but also bottlenose dolphins and long-finned pilot whales. These species are caught accidentally in the same nets and dragged to their death.
Observers of pair trawling in 2001 saw 53 dolphins killed in 116 hauls of the net; with two Irish boats in 1999, 145 dolphins were killed in 313 hauls, with 30 animals being killed by one single haul of the net. There are hundreds of boats in the whole EU fleet mainly from UK, France, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
omg thats so horrible! all those poor dolphins. thats a massive amount though, surely by now with so many boats out on the water dolphin numbers must be being depleted considerably! Why has this not been banned yet?! Surely there are more appropriate methods to catch these fish without harming other marine creatures!!??? But then again typical of ignorant people they will probably wait until the dolphins are endangered until they actually start caring and do something
at port pirie in SA. the dolphins come up to the edge of the boat and you can hand feed them and pat them, they are completely wild. it such an amazing experience...the problem is professional fishermen, the dolphins "steal" their catch and some of the dolphins suppor nasty scars because of their anger...
at port pirie in SA. the dolphins come up to the edge of the boat and you can hand feed them and pat them, they are completely wild. it such an amazing experience...the problem is professional fishermen, the dolphins "steal" their catch and some of the dolphins suppor nasty scars because of their anger...
There are quite a few places like that in SA. I even went somewhere and a seal came up to me.
all those poor dolphins. thats a massive amount though, surely by now with so many boats out on the water dolphin numbers must be being depleted considerably! Why has this not been banned yet?! Surely there are more appropriate methods to catch these fish without harming other marine creatures!!??? But then again typical of ignorant people they will probably wait until the dolphins are endangered until they actually start caring and do something 
