The Italian Government has since promised to eliminate drift-nets from the Italian fishing fleet. The plan, which has now been formalised through the EU, is for all vessels to be decommissioned, or converted to other methods of fishing.

This may be a major breakthrough in marine conservation, but the scheme has sparked little interest among Italian fishermen. Moreover, rumours abound that Italian drift-nets are already being sold on to fishermen in non-EU countries, such as Turkey and parts of Africa, where the will and ability to enforce conservation measures is even weaker than in the EU.

France and Britain’s track records are a little better than Italy’s, but even where these two countries have abided by the EU Resolution (and they haven’t taken it too seriously), drift-nets have proved to be a terrible threat to wildlife. Both France and the UK use drift-nets for albacore tuna in the North-East Atlantic, which led to the vicious ‘tuna wars’ back in 1994.

France was the first country to introduce drift-nets into the albacore fishery in 1987. When the 2.5km rule came into play five years later, the EU allowed French drift-netters to fish with 5km nets until the end of 1993. This had the potential to be extended if it could be demonstrated that 5km drift-nets posed no ecological risk to the marine environment. French officials thus monitored the fishery during this period but found that, contrary to the fishing industry’s beliefs, a huge bycatch of non-target species still occurred. Indeed, the French nets caught 48 non-target species, including six types of shark, five types of whale, four types of dolphin, leatherback and loggerhead turtles, puffins and fulmars. Analysis of the results indicated that the striped dolphin, already at risk in the Mediterranean, might not be able to survive such high levels of mortality in the North-East Atlantic.

A similar study carried out in 1995, on UK boats using 2.5km nets, revealed an even higher rate of dolphin bycatch, indicating that a net restriction was simply not enough to prevent ecological risk to dolphins and other wildlife.

In the Spring of 1994 the European Commission proposed new legislation for a European ban on drift-nets of any length by the end of 1997. The Commission stated, ‘The allowing of nets up to 2.5km long has to be seriously questioned. First of all, it is a cardinal factor in fraud. Secondly, it is an avenue through which the use of drift-nets can be expanded.’

Indeed, it was later on that year that the ‘tuna wars’ broke out. Naval boats were deployed into the Bay of Biscay to put a halt to the fighting which broke out between Spanish pole and line vessels and French, English and Irish drift-netters. Though the Spanish fleet is by far the largest in the North-East Atlantic, the pole and line technique that it employs (essentially involving the use of baited lines to catch individual fish) is a much more sustainable method of fishing than the use of drift-nets. Reportedly incensed by the systematic abuse of the 2.5km limit by French, British and Irish fleets, Spanish crews attacked vessels from these countries, sabotaging any nets that they believed to be illegal. Some Spanish claims were in fact verified, after the confiscation of gear by naval boats from various drift-netting vessels.

One of the factors that sparked this series of confrontations was the British introduction of ‘dolphin doors’, which meant that the overall length of the British nets extended beyond the 2.5km limit. The doors are typically gaps of about 10m long, inserted between panels of drift-net to provide a supposed escape route for dolphins. However, there is no scientific evidence to demonstrate that dolphins (or other wildlife) can detect them.

After the tuna wars, the European Parliament was called upon to vote on the Commission’s proposal for a total ban on drift-nets. The Parliament in fact went a step further, proposing that the ban be implemented by the end of 1994. To curb political wranglings over small coastal drift-net fisheries, it suggested that the ban be specifically targeted at high seas drift-nets.

Since the introduction of these very practical recommendations, back in 1994, the Council of Fisheries Ministers have repeatedly avoided taking a decision on the future of drift-nets, preferring to sweep the issue under the carpet. In the meantime, their unwillingness to upset the political applecart has led to further deaths of an estimated 29–30,000 dolphins and literally millions of sharks.

This year, however, a light has appeared at the end of the proverbial tunnel, in the form of the UK’s new Labour government. A pre-election promise to take environmental matters more seriously has, in this case at least, come to fruition. In the past, the UK has been one of the countries actively blocking the decision to ban drift-nets in Europe. Now the new government has promised to support the ban and has requested that a vote is taken on the subject during the UK’s presidency of the EU this year.

With only the French and Irish remaining openly opposed to the move, the UK’s change of heart should be enough to gain a majority vote in favour of a European ban. Fishermen involved in the industry would then be compensated for any loss of earnings, with funds allocated for the conversion of drift-net vessels to other methods of fishing.

The vote is finally set to take place this month, more than five years after the initial UN moratorium on drift-nets. There is still no guarantee that the issue will be resolved at this point. If a ban is agreed upon, we must ensure that it is properly enforced and that the newly redundant European drift-nets do not resurface in other parts of the world.

The drift-net issue is merely the tip of the iceberg in the debate over the management of Europe’s fisheries. Scientific evidence has pointed to the fact that many fish stocks in European waters are dwindling, some at an alarming rate. Populations of marine mammals such as the harbour porpoise have also been found to be declining – again, the likely cause being bycatch in fishing nets. It is time that the EU faced up to its responsibilities as a resource manager. For all the talk of ‘sustainable development’, little has been done to actually implement practical management plans to achieve anything of the sort. The marine environment is too important for governments to use it as a mere pawn in their political games.

If there is one lesson to be learned from the drift-net issue, it is that the pursuit of short-term economic gain continues to cloud attempts to secure the biological diversity on which the livelihoods of future generations depend.

Drift-nets in the Mediterranean Some 7,500 km of Italian drift-nets are set in the Mediterranean every night during the season. This is equivalent to the distance between Cornwall in the UK and the US state of Washington DC. More than 8,000 whales and dolphins are thought to be killed in Italian drift-nets every year. The target species, swordfish, make up a mere 18% of the total catch. The rest, otherwise known as the bycatch, consists of approximately 85 different species.

Drift-nets in the north-east atlantic

In 1992 the French fleet deployed a total of some 17,300km of drift-net in the North-East Atlantic. In 1993, this figure was over 23,300km.

The French nets caught 48 non-target species including various species of sharks, dolphins, whales, turtles and birds.

In one season the albacore drift-net fleet was estimated to have killed almost 83,000 blue sharks and 1,700 dolphins (mainly striped and common dolphins).