Pair trawls catching bass will continue to remain outside the 12 miles of the Southwest coast of the UK after a Greenpeace judicial review of the regulation was dismissed by the courts.
The judgement was made in relation to a prohibition, introduced in December 2004 by the UK Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) banning pair trawling for bass in the South West in order to reduce dolphin deaths.
The judgment dismissed the Greenpeace claim in full. Greenpeace claimed that the closure would cause a displacement of effort outside 12 miles and increase bycatch. It was seeking for the prohibition of the order to be declared unlawful.
According to Defra, since the 12 mile closure was introduced, bycatch in the pair trawl fishery reduced from 429 deaths in 2003/2004 to around 140 in the latest season. But Greenpeace has argued that there is a higher rate of dolphin bycatch beyond 12 miles. It claims that "any legal measure that displaces fishing vessels beyond the 12-mile coastal zone is likely to lead to more dolphins being trapped and drowned in nets."
Greenpeace has called on the UK government to ban pair trawling up to the mid-point of the English Channel (the limit of British sovereignty) and work with the European Commission to achieve a total ban on this fishery.
Greenpeace oceans campaigner Wille Mackenzie said:
"The Government has the power to protect dolphins in half the English Channel but instead they've been hiding behind meaningless conservation gestures and putting fishermen before dolphin populations."
UK minister of fisheries Ben Bradshaw said that the UK will continue to work on reducing the bycatch of dolphins: "The UK has devoted a great deal of time and effort into tackling the problem of dolphin bycatch in the SW. In fact, we are the only country to have taken action to reduce bycatch of dolphins in this area and this judgment vindicates the action we have taken. I remain committed to reducing bycatch of common dolphins, and in particular, to seeking effective community action to tackle this problem. I am pleased that Commissioner Borg shares our conviction that addressing this problem is a priority for the Community."
The UK has two pairs of vessels in the fishery and France around 20.
