After a couple of difficult seasons, Lorient’s 2021 langoustine season was a good one for the port, which is the premier landing point in France for live langoustine.
The 2019 season was only 579 tonnes, and 2020 saw 722 tonnes landed, but with just a few days to go to the end of the year, the port authority was confident that the 2021 total would break the 1000 tonne barrier.
Lorient’s other booming fishery last year was the arrival of octopus. In the first ten months of the year 174 tonnes were landed to the Lorient auction, compared to only 11 tonnes over the same period in 2020.
For some of Lorient’s small-scale fishermen, the appearance of this octopus fishery has presented them with a very welcome boost, not least as the strong demand from Spain for octopus meant that prices remained high even as the volume increased almost 12-fold compared to the previous year.
While some have welcomed the octopus explosion and done well out of it, there are concerns that this could also affect other species that are important to the fleet operating off the coast of southern Brittany.
During 2021 Lorient’s marine repair zone was licensed for the scrapping vessels, and the first to be broken up was the 17 metre Guillemot IV, which had been on blocks in the port area since running aground in the harbour entrance back in 2007. A further development at the repair area in 2021 was the decision to replace the current 650 tonne synchrolift with an 800 tonne lift, which is being built to the port’s specifications by an Italian supplier.
Fishing gear supplier Le Drezen is making a return to Lorient in 2022 with a new 2300 square metre wire workshop, bringing back into use of an area that had previously been waste ground for many years.
