Electric fishing: the IFREMER withholds a confidential report

29 May 2018

On 29 May 2018, BLOOM officially asked the French Research Institute for the Exploration of the Sea (IFREMER) access to a confidential report on the impact of electricity on fish larvae.

IFREMER produced an expert report in 2016 following significant mortality of seabass larvae at Aquastream, a company located in Brittany. This French hatchery provided many customers in several countries, mainly in the Mediterranean basin. Unfortunately, it went bankrupt and closed in 2017 as a result of significant losses related to mortality of their seabass larvae.

In the current context of European negotiations on the future of electric fishing and following the vote of the European Parliament in January 2018 to definitively ban the use of electricity to catch marine organisms, this expert report could provide crucial elements to increase understanding of the impacts of electricity on fish larvae and early life stages, which are still poorly studied, let alone understood.

Unfortunately, any reference to this report was recently removed from the IFREMER’s website, despite still being mentioned in January 2018.

BLOOM hopes to swiftly obtain this report of crucial importance in the current context of EU negotiations where such critical data can play a determining role in the ban on electric fishing in Europe. The survival of artisanal and traditional European fishers is at stake.

> Read our letter requesting access to the IFREMER’s report

To go further

Navigate through our campaign against electric fishing, in chronological order

If you want to eat ‘sustainable’ seafood, choose virtuous fishing methods. The gear that was used to catch fish must be displayed, so instead of knowing hundreds of species as well as when they are in season (= mission impossible!), simply remember which fishing methods to prefer with our guide on fishing gears (in French only).