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SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ, France (AFP) – Environmental organisation Sea Shepherd on Tuesday filed a authorized criticism in opposition to the house owners of a giant fishing vessel after tens of 1000’s of lifeless fish had been noticed off France’s Atlantic coast.
The NGO final week printed footage of what it stated had been greater than 100,000 lifeless fish floating within the sea some 300 kilometres (186 miles) off the southwestern port metropolis of La Rochelle within the Bay of Biscay.
The fish, of the cod species blue whiting, had been caught by the Margiris, one of many world’s largest fishing trawlers at 143 metres (470 ft) lengthy.
On Thursday, the Margiris logged a “fishing incident” with the freezer-trawler affiliation PFA, saying its internet had ruptured, inflicting the involuntary launch of the fish into the ocean.
The PFA stated the breakage, “a uncommon prevalence” had been on account of “the unexpectedly massive dimension of the fish caught”.
The incident had additionally been reported to the vessel’s flag state, Lithuania, it stated.
However Sea Shepherd stated it suspected the blue whiting, an plentiful species within the northeast Atlantic, might need been discarded intentionally.
“Some vessels, once they catch a large number of fish of low business worth like blue whiting, discard them to make room for higher-value fish,” stated Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Shepherd France.
This follow, she instructed AFP, “is totally unlawful”.
Sea Shepherd’s case was primarily based on the Margiris’s failure to carry the fish it caught to shore in accordance with fishing guidelines, she stated. The organisation had backed up its declare “with numerous parts of what we discovered on the web site”, she added.
France’s maritime minister, Annick Girardin, stated on Friday there can be an inquiry into the incident, and that the lifeless fish can be subtracted from the Margiris’s fishing quota.
“This was a non-authorised discarding of fish,” a spokesperson at her ministry stated.
The EU’s commissioner for oceans and fisheries Virginijus Sinkevicius — himself a Lithuanian nationwide — stated the European Fee would additionally look into the matter.
© Agence France-Presse
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