Fishermen, ecologists unite in northern France against giant factory trawler
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People joining hands at the St Malo protest and holding a banner in French that means "Stop destroyers of the ocean, let's disarm industrial fishing".
PHOTO: AFP
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SAINT-MALO, France – Environmental activists and fishermen on Feb 15 joined forces to protest in northern France against a new giant fishing trawler factory, warning that the vessel risked wrecking livelihoods and the environment.
About 200 people protested in the port of the town of St Malo in a show of anger against the Annelies Ilena, a massive fishing trawler with an on-board processing factory, one of the biggest such vessels in the world.
“It’s an aberration,” said Mr Nathan Kaufmann, a 27-year-old fisherman who travelled from his home region of South Finistere.
“I have a quota of 100kg of mackerel per week: the trawler can catch 400 tonnes in one day, it would take me 70 years to do the same.”
Flying the Polish flag and owned by a Dutch shipowner, the Annelies Ilena, 145m long and 24m wide, is to replace the Joseph Roty II, built in 1974 and which will now remain in dock.
The St Malo Fishing Company said at the beginning of February that it had €15 million (S$21.7 million) of financing for the installation of a production unit for surimi – a fish paste used especially in Asian cuisine – on board the Annelies Ilena.
Too large to enter the port of St Malo, the factory ship will have to dock in the Netherlands. The surimi produced on board will reach the processing unit located in St Malo by road.
“This factory boat is going to take fish to make pate... unload it in the Netherlands then bring everything back by truck” to St Malo, said another fisherman, Simon, who did not want to be identified further.
The protesters formed a human chain along the fishing port of St Malo, with slogans such as “disarm industrial fishing” and “murderers of the seabed”.
Mr Matthias Tavel, a Member of Parliament for the hard-left LFI party, described the Annelies Ilena as “a bulldozer of the sea... madness from an ecological point of view.”
Green European lawmaker Marie Toussaint welcomed “the convergence of struggles” against the Annelies Ilena, whose nets are “capable of swallowing two Eiffel Towers, much more destructive than (those of) small-scale fishing”.
The Annelies Ilena “risks taking fishing quotas from smaller trawlers, to the detriment of local fishermen”, said the environmental campaign association Bloom. AFP
