A Dutch-fishing vessel, the world’s second-biggest fishing trawler, dumped more than 100,000 dead fish into the Atlantic Ocean off the French coast, sending shockwaves across the country.

France fisheries minister Annick Girardin said the images were shocking and that there would be an investigation to find out whether the incident was deliberate.

Sea Shepherd France said it doubted the incident was an accident. Lamya Essemlali, head of the campaign group in France told Reuters her NGO was inclined to believe the fish were deliberately discharged.

“The EU regulation has been implemented so that we can reduce the non-selective fishing methods because it’s very demanding, time-consuming and costs money for a fishing vessel to go back to port and unload the bycatch and then go back at sea”, - she said, referring to discharging a type of fish that a vessel doesn’t want to process, which is banned under European Union fishing rules.