Captain Jean-Louis Donnarel and the crew of the Provence-Cote d’Azur II have faced long, rough and not very profitable fishing voyage. He said that after sailing a total of 6600 nautical miles – first to Cyprus, then the length of the Egyptian coast, to Malta, around the Balearics and then home – the Provence-Cote d’Azur II returned with 84 tonnes of bluefin tuna, a catch that will barely cover the costs of the voyage.
According to Donnarel there were fewer amounts of fish found on the last day. He further said that without that they would have been finished. Donnarel and his crew are at the sharp end of an increasingly bitter row: one that links globally known restaurants, top celebrities, huge international conglomerates, sushi shops and supermarkets across half the world to the livelihoods of a few thousand fishermen.
It is informed that the current situation is worst for bluefin tuna as a single specimen of which can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars – a price that has seen stocks decline in some areas by up to 90 percent. Last month celebrities signed a letter to Nobu, a famous upmarket restaurant chain part-owned by Robert De Niro, threatening a boycott of their favourite haunt.
They voiced that it is astounding lunacy to serve up endangered species for sushi. There’s no justification for peddling extinction, yet that is exactly what Nobu is doing in restaurants around the world. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Atlantic bluefin will be wiped out in three years unless radical action is taken.
Fishermen such as Donnarel are not at all happy with the celebrity-inspired pressure on their livelihoods. He told that tuna fishing has become politically incorrect and they are pariahs. With their 40-metre, £3 million ($7.65 million) boats, the vast nets used to encircle and sweep up entire schools of tuna making their way into the Mediterranean, and their apparent disregard for the limits the European Union have previously tried to impose, the French fishermen have been cast as the villains of the piece.
It is told that the fishermen themselves are very defensive – angry with consumers, governments, conservationists and the EU.
