Illegal nets a scourge of the seas

Donal Hickey on the soaring rate of cetacean deaths.

IMAGINE the outcry if Fungi, the money-spinning Dingle dolphin, died a horrible death after being trapped in an illegal net somewhere off the Kerry coast. But other dolphins have died without much notice in such nets, not very far from where Fungi performs for the pleasure of tourists.

Whales, dolphins and porpoises — collectively known as cetaceans — are increasingly falling victim to illegal nets and other fishing activity, according to expert groups.

Kevin Flannery of the Sea Fisheries Protection Authority believes the use of the nets is widespread around our south-west coast especially. Such nets have recently been seized in Ventry Harbour, Smerwick Harbour and the Tralee Bay area. It is a crime to use them, with fines ranging from €10,000 to €100,000.

The Whale and Dolphin Stranding Scheme at the British Natural History Museum blames an increase in fishing activity for the additional strandings. The plan is to reduce by-catch, or unwanted catch, by restricting certain types of trawling. New “dolphin-friendly” nets, which either have an escape hatch or acoustic devices to keep the mammals away, are also being tested.

Strandings of cetaceans in Britain have increased from 360, in 1994, to 782. And, since only a fraction of dead whales and dolphins run aground on beaches to be counted, the actual number of deaths is almost certainly much higher.

“We believe that the numbers of animals we see stranded probably represents 10% of what is being killed out there,” said Richard Sabin, of the British Natural History Museum.

Marine strandings can occur for all sorts of reasons — many of them nothing to do with human activity. “Some live strandings are natural events. The animals may make navigational errors,” Mark Simmonds, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, told the BBC.

Sabin believes the soaring rate of cetacean deaths can be attributed to an increase in the method of sea bass fishing, known as pair-trawling, where huge nets are suspended between two vessels. Pair-trawling generally happens between November and April, the time when the greatest numbers of dolphin strandings occur.

Sometimes, signs of their miserable deaths can be found on dolphins during postmortems.

“They are trapped underwater in the nets, and they react by closing their blow holes,” said Dr Simmonds. “They fight to get free, and this can last for many minutes; and you can read the signs of this struggle on their bodies — cuts on their snouts, broken teeth, damaged fins.”

Last September, new measures were announced to help reduce death and injury to dolphins from pair-trawling in Britain, including banning pair-trawling out to 20km and introducing a licensing system for vessels out in the 20km-320km zone.

Stories about the human-like qualities of dolphins continue to amaze. The latest concerns a dolphin that came to the rescue of two whales stranded on a beach in New Zealand.

Conservation officer Malcolm Smith and a group of other people had tried in vain for an hour-and-a-half to get the whales to sea. The pygmy sperm whales had repeatedly beached and both they and the humans were tired and set to give up, he said.

But then the dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales, and led them to safety. The bottlenose dolphin, called Moko by local residents, is well known for playing with swimmers off Mahia beach on the east coast of the North Island.

“I don’t speak whale and I don’t speak dolphin, but there was obviously something that went on because the two whales changed their attitude from being quite distressed to following the dolphin quite willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea,” he recalled.