“It’s no longer possible, we all need to sit around the table to try to find solutions. And we have ideas, we are all willing to talk; the door is open!” In the fishing port of Brest (Finistère), Philippe Perrot, a fisherman, vice-president of the fisheries committee of northern Finistère and vice-president of the Iroise Marine Natural Park, is exasperated by a type of administrative procedure that is very specific to his activity.
This professional has been fishing for scallops since 2007. The dredger of his ship, Le Ménestrel, based at the foot of the Grand Large building in the fishing port of Brest, brings back explosive devices dating from the Second World War during the fishing season, like many others. “The harbor is particularly full of them,” he continues. “I, like others, work at the bottom of the harbor, on an axis located between the Lanvéoc naval base (in Crozon, where they are based French nuclear submarinesEditor’s note) and Brest, where a terrible siege took place in 1944, which saw the entire city collapse. Needless to say, you can find a lot of them, and regularly.
When this happens, a protocol, in place for decades, consists of alerting the competent maritime authorities, who must intervene directly on the boat that has brought up the shell(s), as the fisherman explains: “When we discover a device, we call the Portzic semaphore and they put us in touch with the State services. We must then, technically, not move and wait for the maritime police, then for the mine clearance divers to intervene.”
300 euros for three hours of immobilization
In practice, the ship remains immobilized for up to three hours longer, with its fresh cargo. “We work early in the morning. Technically, we have to call them at 11 a.m., and they often arrive at 2 p.m. For this reporting of the device, we are paid 300 euros. But often paid a year later, and with three hours of burnt diesel to wait – and which will obviously be divided between the people on board. Basically, it’s more constraints and losses than anything else, for us,” emphasizes Philippe Perrot, who defends the 20 to 25 shellfish harvesters in the harbor affected by this problem, out of the 33 ships of this type based in Brest.
The ordeal is such that in September 2023, two fishing skippers on board Brest shellfish harvesters were sent before the Brest criminal court for “shell fraud”. They were accused of having diverted this compensation system by declaring less than what they had actually discovered in one day, thus keeping gear in reserve for the following day or days. The two fifty-year-olds were given a six-month suspended sentence, a fine of 5,000 euros and a ban on practicing the profession for six months.
This judgment had outraged the profession, at the local level. At the same time, during the last two fishing seasons, shells have strangely become increasingly rare. According to “Le Télégramme”, which relayed information from “Canard Enchaîné”, 129 shells were fished out during the 2020-2021 campaign, 174 in 2021-2022, then only a few dozen followed the following year. Finally, “in the 2023-2024 season, there must be ten, barely”, counts Philippe Perrot, who points out that “mine hunters and underwater drones do their job on the Atlantic coast and in the harbor, but the authorities deploy thousands of euros for their interventions, compared to a paltry 300 euros for the fishermen”.
The latter are therefore waiting for an official meeting with the competent authorities. Contacted, the Atlantic maritime prefecture confirmed that it wanted to organize a meeting on the subject with them, before the start of the scallop season, which starts in October.
