Just as a journalist arrived in the helicopter this morning, we found three dead dolphins with their stomachs cut wide open floating dead in the sea very close to the ship.

The crew made the grim discovery when returning to the Esperanza after stopping the two French trawlers Columbine and L'Arlequin from pair trawling for sea bass - about 40 miles south of Plymouth. The boats, along with five other pairs of trawlers, were fishing in the same area the dolphins were found earlier this morning.

Take a look at a slideshow of the action and dolphin discovery.

I imagine the reason the bellies of the dolphins were cut was to try and make them sink and so hide the shame of the slaughter. View our bycatch animation to find out more.

Previously I have filmed the Dall's porpoise hunts in Japan and this morning brought back many hard depressing memories of that event. It is difficult to take in that this sort of killing happens so close to the beaches of the UK.

Please send an online fax to the EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg, asking him to ban pair trawling for bass.

The helicopter has now left as we have had a shipping forecast that bad weather is coming.

David, Comms logistics

This is so cruel - I can't believe what lengths these fishermen go to cover their tracks.

Please keep up the good work Greenpeace, I fully support the actions you take to try and save these beautiful, innocent creatures.

To open wide the belly of the bycaught dolphins is a real shame. Those butchers must feel guilty if they're trying to make the dolphins sink. Thus we understand that counts of stranded cetaceans along our coasts really underscore the amount of bycatch. In February I found two stranded common dolphins with their throats widely cut, and I suppose here the bad guys did that because the dolphins were caught in the trawler net.

Please keep up your good work halting those French pelagic trawlers going for reproducing spawns of seabass.