Prosecuted for “disturbance of a protected species”, three companies on the Côte d’Azur which offered to swim with dolphins in the Mediterranean, an activity now prohibited, risk heavy fines and the confiscation of their boats. Those responsible for these companies were tried by the Grasse criminal court on Wednesday. The public prosecutor on Wednesday demanded suspended three-month prison sentences, fines of 5,000 to 18,000 euros and the confiscation of the boats.
For 300 euros per person for a day, these structures based in Mandelieu-la-Napoule and Antibes offered to jump into the water, in the open sea, with mask and snorkel, in the middle of cetaceans previously spotted using an ultralight. However, since a ministerial decree of 2021, it is forbidden in France to approach within 100 m of a dolphin and even more to swim with this animal.
The operators were “informed” of the regulations but “passed in force”, supported the prosecutor. Also prosecuted for “misleading commercial practice”, they risk up to two years in prison and a fine of 300,000 euros.
Boats sometimes less than five meters from the animals
“It is not the boats that come to the dolphins, but the dolphins which have always come to meet the boats”, defended himself, imitated by his colleagues, one of the business owners, Martial Fremont, Wednesday evening at the court bar. “The wake of boats attracts dolphins like a power line attracts swallows”, assured the one who presents himself as “naturalist guide since 2005”.
“I find it very difficult to hear that, when we know that these companies use a plane to spot the dolphins”, retorted Isabelle Vergnoux, lawyer for the France Nature Environnement association, for whom “the defendants are trying to drown Fish “. The videos taken by passengers and analyzed by the maritime gendarmerie “clearly show that we have swimmers and boats sometimes less than five meters from the dolphins”, which is prohibited, she adds.
Most of the twenty-one species of cetaceans that live in the Mediterranean are classified as “endangered”, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, in particular due to encounters with enterprising tourists or collisions with ships.
“A major source of stress for animals”
“There can be no disturbance with marine mammals in the open environment”, however affirmed an ethologist specialist in the behavior of dolphins quoted by the defense, Philippe Maurt, author of an expertise for which he was “paid” to amount of “1,500 to 2,000 euros” by a group of the three operators implicated.
“How then can we give credit to this expertise which does not cite any other study? “, questioned Me Isabelle Vergnoux, citing for her part a “scientific” work of the CNRS according to which “as soon as there is an interaction of the cetacean with the man, there is interruption of a natural behavior”. The activity around them, the study continues, is “a significant source of stress for the animals”.
The lawyer for the defendants Xavier Nogueras affirmed that his clients were “massacred”, in particular because of the seizure of their boat depriving them of any income during the summer of 2022. “If we had been left with our boats, we could have offer other activities during the summer”, explained one of the owners Thierry Pourrere, who claimed not to be “a dolphin gangster”. Martial Fremont has meanwhile taken early retirement to use his savings plan and “reimburse customers who had booked their sea trips” while Jean-Christophe Cane’s company is in cessation of payments and “approaches of winding up”. The decision was reserved for January 26.