At midnight on Monday, January 22, the Bay of Biscay will be closed to fishing until the same hour on February 20. The initiative taken by public authorities to preserve dolphins is unprecedented on this scale. It involves between 400 and 450 vessels.

Environmental groups are pleased about this reprieve for dolphins, porpoises and marine fauna in general, including fisheries' resources. Since 2016-2017, dolphins, who are officially protected, have been dying in massive numbers every year off France's western seaboard, especially at this time of the year. During the winter of 2022-2023, 1,482 dolphin carcasses, washed ashore, and up to 10,000 individuals may have sunk to the bottom, according to scientific estimates. The fishermen, for their part, are furious at not being able to work for four weeks.

The process leading up to the decision to close the Bay of Biscay went through several phases. The government had not initially envisaged such a radical measure, especially as it would also have to be applied in 2025 and 2026. It was, nevertheless, forced to implement it rapidly, following the ruling of the Council of State, the top administrative court, on December 22, 2023.

Last spring, the high jurisdiction ordered the French government to act within six months in order to reduce the impact of fishing activities on the mortality of small cetaceans in the Bay of Biscay. But the decree that followed the ruling on March 20, 2023, published on October 24, and signed by the secretariat for the sea, contained too many exemptions to produce the expected effect. The Council of State, once again partially suspended the order after a recourse by four environmental organizations – France Nature Environnement (FNE), Sea Shepherd, Défense des milieux aquatiques (Defense of aquatic environments), and the League for the Protection of Birds.

The first decree exempted certain fishing methods from the ban, as well as all vessels equipped with acoustic repellents designed to keep dolphins away or on-board cameras to understand what causes all those accidental catches. All their owners had to do was undertake to install one of these devices at a later date to avoid the ban. As a result, only 10 boats out of several hundred were temporarily excluded from the zone, reports FNE.

This is no longer the case: The four-week closure applies to all vessels of at least 8 meters and operating with either pelagic trawls (towed between the mid- and surface waters by a single vessel), or bottom trawls (towed by two vessels); or with different categories of netting, to which seines were added, which were not included in the first list. Bottom trawls, which are not considered to be accident-prone regarding cetaceans, are not concerned.

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