Record 1,100 dolphins wash up on French shores this year

PARIS (AP) — The dolphins' bodies were horribly mutilated, the fins cut off.

But what shocked French marine researchers wasn't just the brutality of the deaths of these highly intelligent mammals, but also the numbers involved — a record 1,100 have washed up on France's Atlantic coast since January.

The mass deaths, widely blamed on aggressive industrial fishing, have alarmed animal welfare groups and prompted France's ecology minister to launch a national plan to protect them.

"There's never been a number this high," said Willy Daubin, a member of La Rochelle University's National Center for Scientific Research. "Already in three months, we have beaten last year's record, which was up from 2017 and even that was the highest in 40 years."

Though Daubin said 90 percent of the fatalities resulted from accidental capture in industrial nets, the reason behind the spike this year is a mystery.

"What fishing machinery or equipment is behind all these deaths?" he asked.

Autopsies carried out on the dolphins this year by La Rochelle University's National Center for Scientific Research show extreme levels of mutilation.

Activists say a common practice is for fishermen to cut body parts off the suffocated dolphins after they are pulled up on the nets, to save the net itself.

French Ecology Minister Francois de Rugy rushed last Friday to La Rochelle in an attempt to lower the number dying as a result of human action. He's under pressure not least because of French President Emmanuel Macron's pro-ecology stance and oft-quoted slogan to "Make the Planet Great Again."

Rugy has come up with some plans, including bolstering research into existing acoustic repellent devices in place in some 26 two-vessel trawlers off the Bay of Biscay, an industrial fishing hub in the Atlantic...