The government had already taken an identical temporary ban measure in 2024, 2025 and 2026. According to a study conducted during the winter of 2024-2025, it would have reduced accidental catches by 60%.
For the fourth year in a row, the government is renewing the closure for one month, in early 2027, of fishing for certain ships equipped with trawls or nets in the Bay of Biscay, in order to reduce accidental dolphin catches, according to an order published on Friday, September 11 in the Official Journal.
The ban will apply to vessels of eight meters or more using pelagic trawls, bottom beef trawls, pelagic sennes, wedged mash nets, tremes or combined tremes and gillnets, the decree lists.
However, the system has been relaxed, with the possibility for fishermen to choose their period of inactivity of thirty consecutive days, in a window extended by six weeks, between January 15 and February 27. The Gulf of Morbihan, the Arcachon basin and the Gironde estuary are not concerned by this closure.
by the Minister for the Sea and Fisheries, Catherine Chabaud.
60% reduction in catches
At the end of June, the Paris Administrative Court, seized by environmental NGOs, demanded a « national action plan » from the State within a year, to better protect dolphins in the Bay of Biscay.
The court found that the estimated number of accidental catches of these cetaceans had exceeded the thresholds to ensure the long-term viability of populations.
During the winter of 2024-2025, the closure of the Bay of Biscay to fishing had reduced accidental dolphin catches by 60%, according to the Pelagis observatory attached to the CNRS and the University of La Rochelle: about 1,900 common specimens had been killed, compared to 4,700 on average per winter, between 2017 and 2023.
ICES, an international scientific organization of reference, estimates that the sustainable level for the species in the « North-East Atlantic Management Unit », an area much larger than the Bay of Biscay, is a maximum of 4,900 deaths per year.
