October 21, 2012 — British fishermen are finding themselves on the front line in an increasingly bitter dispute with the French over the right to catch molluscs.
Anton Bailey gazes apprehensively at the horizon from the helm of his scallop trawler Emulate, watching for any sign of hostile craft.
Tension remains high among British fishermen working the English Channel following an unprovoked attack by French trawlermen, just under a fortnight ago.
While helping his crew gather the rich harvest of scallops from the bed of the Baie de Seine, off the coast of Normandy, Mr Bailey uses satellite tracking systems, and his own eyes, to keep watch on the movement of French craft in the area.
What he and his colleagues working these waters are desperate to avoid is a repeat of the violence of Monday, October 8, when French fishermen mounted what is now being described as “an act of piracy” over claims that the British were fishing within the 12-mile limit from the Normandy shore imposed by the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, something they deny.
“Their boats appeared in a line along the horizon and proceeded to surround me and about half a dozen other British trawlers,” said Mr Bailey. “Suddenly they started pelting us with iron bars, rocks and firing flares at us. We had to take refuge in the wheelhouse. It was pretty nasty stuff.”
Some of the French vessels are said to have tried to ram the British and their crews threw ropes into the props of British trawlers to snag them.
A seven-hour stand-off followed, with the French leaving only when a French police boat and a naval vessel, the Pruviere, arrived at the request of the British Government.
The attack was the culmination of weeks of tension following the collapse of talks between British and French fishermen over the allocation of fishing areas and quotas.
The dispute now threatens to escalate into a full-scale “scallop war”, with some militant French trawlermen saying they will blockade British ports and ferries and target British exports of scallops if they don’t get their way.
Their actions have deeply angered men such as Jersey-born Mr Bailey, 38, who has spent all his working life at sea.
“It’s just plain wrong,” he said, from the wheelhouse of his 50ft trawler, which sails 18 hours out of Brixham to reach the Baie de Seine scallop beds. “The French lads are fishermen like us, and we respect the fact they are trying to make a living, but attacking our boys like that is not on. It’s not the way to go about settling your disputes.”
As he speaks, Kerry Watts, 28, one of the Emulate’s four-strong crew — and the only woman working on the Brixham fleet – begins sorting the latest haul of scallops, lifted by two huge metal dredgers which scour the seabed.
In order to comply with strict European Union conservation measures, each scallop shell has to be measured through a metal funnel to make sure it is mature enough to harvest. The younger, smaller ones less than 110mm wide are thrown back into the sea to carry on growing.
Read the full story in the Telegraph