News

Experts are claiming that dolphins could disappear from the English Channel unless urgent action is taken to protect them from commercial fishing.

The sight of Folkestone's Dave and other dolphins could become a thing of the past, conservationists warned yesterday after research showed an increase in the number of the creatures being washed up dead on English Channel beaches.

Unless urgent action is taken against the hundreds of miles of gill nets and tangle nets around the approaches to the Channel, the dolphins and porpoises there would be wiped out, experts say.

So far this year 128 dolphins and porpoises have been found washed up dead on the coast of the South West, according to a report by Marine Connection, a whale and dolphin charity, and the Wildlife Trusts.

This is despite a ban imposed in 2004 by the Government on pair trawling for bass congregating in the Channel to spawn – in which two trawlers tow up to two thirds of a mile between them – which was thought to be killing dolphins. The ban only applied to British trawlers and within the 12 mile limit but French and Spanish fishermen still fish for bass in the Channel.