While the legislative election campaign is in full swing, French fishermen, gathered on June 20 and 21 at the fishing and seafood conference in Lorient (Morbihan), the main annual meeting of decision-makers and stakeholders in the fishing, deplored the lack of political support. The National Committee for Maritime Fisheries and Marine Farming (CNPMEM) notes that fishermen have the feeling of having been abandoned by the State, and also observes a growing rejection of European fisheries policy.
The consequences of Brexit not digested
In recent years, the sector has faced headwinds. Brexit has, in fact, led to losses of fishing licenses in British waters. During the year 2023, 90 French ships were sent to scrap. Breton ports paid the heaviest price, recording a loss of 40 boats. The fishermen affected were compensated.
Last spring, the anger of sailors from Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais), France’s leading fishing port, was heard after the United Kingdom’s decision to ban bottom trawling, a controversial technique. which involves dragging a gigantic net across the seabed in 13 British marine protected areas. In reaction, Paris raised possible “retaliatory measures” targeting British imports and ordered the EU, along with seven other member states, to verify the ” compliance “ of the London decision.
In addition to Brexit, the sector has had to deal with restrictions decided for environmental reasons. This winter, the closure of the Bay of Biscay for a month to protect dolphins has “dealt a new blow to the entire sector”says Olivier Le Nézet, president of the CNPMEM: producers and auctions were deprived of hundreds of tonnes of sea bass, monkfish, sole or turbot fished during this period.
Trawling, a sensitive issue
The question of the impact of trawling has been the subject of lively debate. Isabelle Thomas, general secretary of the Breton fishing interprofessional organisation Breizhmer, which has a label to guarantee the Breton origin of fish, campaigned in favour of trawling, which guarantees a large volume of goods for sale: “It’s still the volume that determines the sector,” she emphasizes.
And to raise the issue of food sovereignty: “If we reduce the supply further, what will happen is an increase in imports, and when the fish comes from China, we will no longer have control over anything.”
Didier Gascuel, a marine ecology researcher, supports a “necessary de-trawling” to invent more sustainable fishing “to the line, to the trap, to the net”. This transition to greener fishing could be the best response to the crisis. After Brexit, “It was mainly trawlers that were scrapped”he recalled. In his eyes, the bottom trawl has a “very strong environmental footprint”contributing significantly to the overexploitation of resources and the degradation of the seabed.
The French fleet seriously weakened
Weakened by a series of crises, French fishing is struggling to meet the challenges of renewing an aging fleet and managing resources more sustainably. The French fishing fleet has shrunk by more than a quarter in twenty years, to around 6,000 vessels in 2022, with an average age of 30 years.
Olivier Le Nézet, president of the CNPMEM, declared that the renewal of the fleet was his top priority. Christophe Collin, director of Armement Bigouden, a trawler company which maintains nine ships and employs 80 people, deplored a certain impasse: “Our boats are 31 years old on average, we are reaching the end. And we can’t build new ones (…) because of European rules.”
A force in Europe, but in decline
These prevent the gauge of a boat being replaced from being changed, for fear that increasing the power will increase catches. This is a brake on the acquisition of new, safer and less polluting vessels that would make the fishing sector more attractive to young people.
Despite everything, France is the second European producer of seafood products, behind Spain, with 516,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish caught in 2022, down 6% compared to 2021, according to government data. On the other hand, French fishing remains a minority on the French plate, and seafood products contributed 5.6 billion euros to the foreign trade deficit in 2022.
