A plea to halt the carnage suffered by dolphins at the hands of Britain’s fishing fleets is being made by a south-west newspaper.

The Western Morning News claims that dead and dying dolphins are being washed up on beaches every day, killed or maimed by the factory ships that trawl the waters of the UK.

Almost 100 have been found, scarred or bleeding, on beaches in the Westcountry in the last five weeks, according to a powerful Page One Comment in the paper.

Editor Barrie Williams said the fishing industry has been paying only lip service to whale and dolphin conservation measures “for far too long”.

He said: “It is no coincidence that the increase in whale and dolphin deaths has come at the same time as an increase in the level of large, mid-water trawling off our coasts.

“Dolphins are attracted to these trawls because of the fish that are being caught. They find it impossible to escape the nets.

“No commercial fisherman wants to catch whales and dolphins. It is illegal to do so, they can damage nets and other gear as they struggle to break free, and as the death count piles up and the negative publicity increases, the public will quickly lose its appetite for fish caught in this way.”

The paper ran a four-page special investigation looking at the “carnage” and how it might be halted.

It looked at where dolphins have been found stranded since January 1 in Cornwall, Devon and Dorset and spoke to politicians, animal welfare experts and campaigners.

Eight MPs have since signed a House of Commons motion calling for a ban on the use of “giant factory ships” which operate in the English Channel and its western approaches.

The Government has also announced trials of new, “dolphin-friendly” nets.

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