Paris (AFP)

Sometimes singled out for its environmental impact, targets antispecial activists, facing serious recruitment difficulties: the French fishery, which is gathering this week in Granville for its annual meeting, wants to think about ways to improve its image.

"Fishing bashing": the word was dropped by the Minister of Agriculture, Didier Guillaume, came to meet the fishermen on June 20. The latter had been struck by the NGO Bloom which criticizes Europe for subsidizing the renewal of certain fishing boats, favoring "chronic overexploitation" of the oceans.

Although antispecies activists most often attack butcheries, at least one fish store was vandalized in 2018, in the Hauts-de-France.

"The image of the fisherman at the port, it's nice, but fishing, it really suffers from a deficit of image, even a certain demonization", says to AFP Jacques Woci, president of France Filière Fishing, organization responsible for promoting French fishing.

During a round table at the conference of the fishery entitled "Respond to attacks against the image of the industry", he will be surrounded by interlocutors unaccustomed to discuss the torment of sole or cod, and more often at the bedside. .. cattle breeders.

As Chloé Serre, director of Interbev-Normandie, interprofession of livestock and meat: "We realized that the consumer no longer knows our production systems, no longer knows our trades," she says, fearing that it is the same for the fishermen.

"France, she likes to have fish on her plate, but she does not want to know how it was caught," even says Olivier Le Nézet, president of the regional committee of fisheries of Brittany.

"If our industry is not well known, it's because the professionals do not know how to make it known either," says Woci.

Despite the establishment a few years ago of a Pavillon France brand, intended to promote fish caught by French armaments, a quarter of French admits to know no fish species from French fishing, according to a survey of France Fishing sector.

- Brexit still worries -

The fishermen also deplore a growing public hostility: the chairman of the national fisheries committee, Gerard Romiti, denounced this summer "increasingly violent attacks" on social networks and the need to "take into account" in order to "evolve our fishing methods and production models".

A round table is organized to "take into account the environmental impact of the sectors".

Concerning overfishing, which still concerns a third of the species present off the European coast and even more according to some NGOs, Mr. Le Nézet defends French fishing, "the very example of what to do".

He mentions the setting up, in Saint-Brieuc or Quiberon, of a "police" financed by the fishermen to track down the perpetrators of offenses in shell fishing, whether tourists or professionals.

"People have no idea how much fishing has evolved, the fact that these are modern trades, with computers, and in the end, the image that people have of fishing is the good sailor fisherman with its yellow wax, as we a little image of Martine on the farm, "denounces Ms. Serre, which highlights the" big recruitment problems "sector.

French fishing is indeed looking for 1,200 to 2,000 sailors in the next five years.

In addition to image issues, the consequences of a Brexit for the access of French fishermen to British waters will also be in everyone's mind, despite the vagueness that prevails in the United Kingdom.

"It is essential that Europe and the French government fight for a continuity of access to the fishery resource in the waters of the United Kingdom, because behind it is a cataclysm on the coast" warns M. Le Nezet, who fears more than anything a Brexit without agreement, which would forbid access to British waters overnight.

Fish caught in British waters represents no less than 30% of sales in Breton auctions.

© 2019 AFP