Stopped Friday in the most prolific deposit in the world, the Bay of Seine, shell fishing has again broken records with 13,500 tons caught in the East Channel from November 14 to March 16, for all Norman auctions from Dieppe to Granville.

This is 15% more than last year according to the fisheries committee, while auctions represent only 40% of the volume landed.

"It is really the fallow that multiplies the resource, global warming probably too" assures the "boss" of L'Espérance leaving the port at night with thirty other trawlers.

The trawler L'Espérance sets off off Port-en-Bessin-Huppain (Calvados, north-west of France) to go fishing for scallops. Photo taken on March 15, 2023 © Lou BENOIST / AFP

Fallow is a rotating fishing ban zone set up in collaboration between Ifremer and fishermen.

The Seine Bay, from Barfleur to Cap d'Antifer, is divided into four sections, one of which has been closed every year since 2016 to allow bivalves to reproduce better.

This year it is zone 1, the most westerly, which is closed, forcing the trawlers of the Cotentin, far from Port-en-Bessin, to descend to the south: it is not 5am and the horizon is covered with searchlights.

"The guys from Saint-Vaast are coming," says the boss, pointing to the lights offshore, warm in his bridge that has nothing to envy to an airliner cockpit.

Radar, sounder, bathymetry, plotting tables, radios, GPS, cameras to maneuver dredges, this ship at two and a half million euros boxing in the category of less than 15 meters, for a daily quota of 1,800 kilos.

About forty empty bins await the precious shells on the aft deck.

It is 6am, the dredges are waking up: two steel bars plunge 20 meters deep to trap the shells on the sand in metal rings and rise 5 to 600 kilos per cycle.

Manage access to the resource

Unloaded in a deafening din, the product of fishing, shells but also molluscs, fish and... pebbles, is sorted by two sailors on a conveyor belt in 20 to 25 minutes.

There will be five rotations.

The harvest has been growing steadily for nearly ten years, and Eric Foucher, a researcher at the Ifremer station in Port-en-Bessin, knows why: he is the one who set up the management of this resource.

A scallop fisherman off Port-en-Bessin-Huppain (Calvados, northwestern France). Photo taken on March 15, 2023 © Lou BENOIST / AFP

"Fishing is limited in number of vessels, 220 licenses for the bay, in time, a few months, a few days a week, a few hours a day," said the researcher interviewed by AFP.

Dredges too: "Since 2020 the rings are 97 millimeters against 92 previously, shells less than two years old now remain at the bottom to reproduce".

The idea of fallow land was blown to man by the ocean. "In 2011-2012, the bay was closed because of a toxin, ASP (Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning, editor's note)," recalls Mr. Foucher, "the following year, there were more shells, and bigger."

Since then, an area has been fallow each year, allowing a greater density of shells at the bottom of the water, and therefore better reproduction, which leads to... A greater density: "in 2005 there was a shell every 5 m2, in 2022 there was one per m2, or even three or four in places".

Scallopps (Pecten Maximus) are the landing of scallops at Port-en-Bessin-Huppain (Calvados, north-west of France). Photo taken on March 15, 2023anded at Port-en-Bessin, northwestern France, on March 15, 2023 © Lou BENOIST / AFP

The last dredge is sorted on L'Espérance in the late morning off Omaha Beach, whose sun warms the sand reddened with American blood on June 6, 1944.

The 40 empty bins of the aft deck are now filled to the brim, the quota of the season is made "faster and easier than last season", concludes Jean-Marc Daubert, as every year.

© 2023 AFP