France: blockades leave a dying industry
BOULOGNE, FRANCE – I’m sitting surveying the docks in Boulogne-sur-Mer – which, I’m told, is France’s premier fishing port. Not for much longer.
Fishermen from Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk have, after two days of blockades – which disrupted ferry traffic across the channel – thrown in the towel in the face of threatened fines which none of them, frankly, could afford to pay. So the stoppages are over.
And so, sadly, is the local fishing industry.
The pecheurs of Boulogne and Dunkirk have won a small stay of execution by way of a promise from the French fisheries minister, to barter with other countries for a small increase in their quota to catch sole. This will keep them fishing for a few more months.
No such luck for the cod fishermen of Calais though. The European Commission is not going to relent on its determination that cod in the Eastern Channel are in danger of extinction.
This became a story of interest to Brits because of the coachloads of marooned holidaymakers and lorryloads of goods backed up on the roadside. Now the blockade’s been lifted, the story becomes one of a twilight industry in the throes of its death pangs – and that we’ve all seen before, in British fishing ports, coal mines and tin mines.
But I’m struck by the melancholy I can see in the faces of the fishermen I’ve met here. They know the game’s up. But they’re not going to let it all crumble with a Gallic shrug. They’re determined to go down fighting.
A fishing boat’s just passed me flying a skull and crossbones. Others tied up next to me sport banners saying rude things about “Sarko.”
In the distance, smoke still rises from burning tyre barricades outside the vast fish refrigeration plants I drove past this morning.
But the melancholy is down to the fact that these men know in their hearts that resistance is futile.
They’re just fighting for whatever concessions they can wangle – which in the case of Calais’s cod men is the last resort: le Plan pour Sortir de la Flotte. They’re looking for government subsidies to scrap their fleet.
The Worldwide Fund for Nature, in a report released yesterday said 40 per cent of fishing catch is wasted or not accounted for regardless of how endangered the species; the UN has estimated three quarters of world fish stocks are now either exploited or recovering from depletion.
Here, they contest EC rulings about threatened extinction, demanding scientific evidence that quotas haven’t allowed stocks to replenish. But passing all the poisson restaurants which line the streets of these channel ports, I can’t help but wonder whether in 20 or 30 years’ time eating fish will be like eating caviar is today.
A way of life faces extinction in a corner of north-eastern France, brought to our attention by les blockades. All the while, the ripples of crisis are spreading silently around an endangered planet.