Sea bass off the menu as fishing methods decimate dolphins and porpoises

Conservationists give wild species an ‘avoid’ rating as at-risk creatures get tangled in Bay of Biscay nets

WILD sea bass is off the menu as the European fishing industry is killing thousands of dolphins and porpoises, conservationists warned. Bay of Biscay sea bass are often caught using trawler or static nets in which the cetaceans become entangled, the Marine Conservation Society said.

The fish has been given an “avoid” rating on the charity’s bi-annual Good Fish Guide, as concerns grow for dolphin and porpoise populations in the region.

In recent years thousands of dead dolphins have been found washed up on French beaches, with numbers rising sharply since 2015.

Earlier this year marine biologists warned that the Atlantic Coast dolphin population was at risk due to fishing methods. The charity plans to push UK restaurants and supermarkets to stop stocking the unsustainable sea bass, which could see it disappearing from menus and shelves.

Top chefs including Raymond Blanc, Hugh Fearnley-whittingstall and Jamie Oliver also refer to the ratings.

Last year set a record for strandings, and 2020 was only slightly better. According to the Pelagis Observatory, based in La Rochelle, France, almost 1,000 cetaceans were found washed up in the first three months of this year, many of them with mutilations thought to have been caused by fishermen releasing them from nets. The overall number of deaths is believed to be higher as many carcasses do not wash ashore.

Diners are more likely to encounter Bay of Biscay sea bass while abroad, but some is being imported into the UK. It is largely caught by French and Spanish trawlers.

While wild sea bass stocks in British waters, once perilously low, have recovered slightly in recent years, they are still not secure.

Charlotte Coombes, manager of the charity’s Good Fish Guide, said diners should avoid the fish altogether if possible, but if ordering should ask for British sea bass that had been line-caught or farmed.

“The management measures that they’ve put in place have really managed to cut down the fishing pressure on UK sea bass. So that definitely had a part to play in it starting to recover. We still think more needs to be done. But it’s gradually moving in the right direction,” she said.

In July the European Commission threatened legal action against France, Spain and Sweden unless they took action to reduce the impact on dolphins and porpoise from trawlers.

Campaigners have also put pressure on European countries. In January, Sea Shepherd France brought several dead dolphins to Paris to campaign for an end to these fishing methods.

Fishing boats can install acoustic pingers on nets which would deter dolphins, but in practice this is not happening widely enough, conservationists say. Increasing dolphin deaths may be caused by a growing number of the animals entering the bay in pursuit of fish stocks.

While dolphins are still abundant in the bay, nets have led to a devastating drop in populations in other parts of the world, and there are concerns that the same could happen in Europe.

In the Indian Ocean, “bycatch” from tuna fishing has contributed to an 80 per cent drop in dolphin populations in recent decades, a study found this year.

North Sea herring has also been downgraded, moving from green to amber, over concerns about a sharp fall in the stock size since 2016.

Dover sole in the English Channel and Irish Sea caught by some methods has moved to green.