ANNONCER
The decision announced earlier this week by French fishing company Scapêche to phase out its deep water activities has not been universally welcomed by industry figures.
French fishing company Scapêche has boosted the activities of its coastal fleet with the addition of a 17 metre ring netter.
French fishing company Scapêche is set to end its deep water fishing operations. Agromousquetaires, the food division of Groupement des Mousquetaires and the parent company of French fishing group Scapêche, has announced that it will gradually cease its deep water fishing operations between now and 2025.
Much of France’s fishing industry has breathed a sigh of relief as proposals that would have had severe repercussions for the fishing industry were voted down.
When Boulogne fisherman Stéphane Ramet was looking at investing in his family’s fishing business, the choice was between a new vessel and a refit, and they decided to go for an extensive refit of trawler Jean Paul II.
A film by French filmmaker Mathilde Jounot has been premiered at the annual Pêcheurs du Monde film festival currently taking place in Lorient. The crowd-funded documentary attracted enough backing to be able to delve into issues surrounding increasing regulation of the oceans, as well as the question of privatisation and the shadowy role in this played by NGOs.
Bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean and Atlantic are doing better, according to a report by the French National Committee for Fisheries and Fish Farming (CNPMEM). Although the situation today is not perfect, bluefin have not disappeared as some NGOs had loudly predicted would happen by 2012.
The Martinez shipyard at St-Cyprien in south-western France has announced that it is to build a new tuna vessel in a contract worth €3.50 million. This is the first of its kind to be built for almost ten years.
A Parliamentary amendment linked to the Biodiversity Act that would ban deep water trawling will be voted on by French deputies later this week. France’s fishing industry is furious and Olivier le Nezet, chairman of the Brittany Fisheries Committee has said that such a ban would be a disaster.
Icefish were last caught in France’s Southern Ocean territories around Kerguelen more than twenty years ago and the fishery came to an end in 1993 when the mainly Russian and Polish trawlers that fished for it left many of their distant waters fishing grounds, including the French territorial waters around Kerguelen.
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