COMBRIT, France — October 22, 2013 — A vote by the European Parliament, set for Oct. 23 in Strasbourg, France, could determine whether those subsidies continue to support the big-fleet approach or, instead, help pay for changes meant to steer the European Union’s saltwater fishing industry toward a more environmentally sound future.
In a world of giant trawlers and fish-farming operations, Gwenaël Pennarun still sets out most days from this Breton village to catch sea bass the old-fashioned way, with baited hooks.
It is a way of life, and work, that he hopes the European Union will continue to support, depending on a coming vote on its fishing policies.
Early on a crisp and windy morning recently, Mr. Pennarun, 50, was a few miles offshore in the Bay of Biscay, hooking minnows and playing out several dozen long lines with an efficiency born of 30 years on the job. Though the risk of a fatal fall overboard is always present for someone working alone, he nevertheless appeared oblivious to the tilt of the deck and the soaking spray as his 8.5-meter, or 28-foot, aluminum boat climbed and plunged with each wave.
A kilogram — or 2.2 pounds — of line-caught sea bass fillets, known in French as “bar de ligne,” can retail for more than 100 euros, or $137, in a Paris fish market, about double that of trawled fish and perhaps four times that of most farmed. The line-caught fish reach the dock fresh, and often alive, not frozen like trawled fish, and many customers prefer the taste and texture of the wild fish to that of farmed. Eco-conscious consumers may also be willing to pay more for fish caught according to a method that groups like Greenpeace endorse for “sustainability.”
While he is able to support his family, like many “artisanal” fishermen and women here Mr. Pennarun worries that his livelihood is at risk from industrial fishing operations subsidized by the European Union. Even the Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, has acknowledged that the subsidies, worth hundreds of millions of euros each year, support a fleet that is two to three times as large as is ecologically or commercially sustainable.
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