Bruno Garcia of the Charente-Maritime fishing federation answers questions from listeners on France Bleu la Rochelle, today Patrick who regularly walks in the parks of La Rochelle. He would like to know more about the beautiful and big fish that can be observed in the canals that cross the site.
Bruno Garcia : Already I believe that it is necessary to situate the environment in which one finds oneself. These canals are fed by rainwater through small canals so we are in fresh water and on property of the city of La Rochelle.
So there are freshwater fish there!
Insightful Jean-Luc! and these fish are generally carp or mullet. On the lower part, the closest to the sea you can come across mules and a little higher at the level of the animal enclosures where you have deer, peacocks, the fish to which you distribute bread are carp.
Goldfish too?
Goldfish also belong to the same family of cyprinids, like carp. So they are not necessarily red but sometimes yellow or orange or white or sometimes the mixture of all these colors. The largest specimens are carp and can reach, as you have probably seen, sizes of 4 to 5 kg. You have different species of carp, hides, mirrors, commons.
The water is very often very green in color, is this an indicator of good quality?
Not really ! We are rather in the presence of a degraded environment which concentrates pollution. And yes if the waters are “loaded” it is simply because the rainwater is not spring water but also that all the droppings of ducks, geese, nutria, turtles and fish come to disturb the water. ‘water. This green color is directly linked to the proliferation of algae which nevertheless has an advantage, it is that of feeding the carp at the juvenile stage.
Is it a medium that is self-sufficient then?
We can’t say that but you know in remote regions of China, we farm ducks or geese above ground on stilts and below, thanks to the droppings, we grow carp or crucian fish in bodies of water. . Makes you want to eat fish!
Can you fish in these La Rochelle parks?
?
If we could I won’t be here this morning. An already very old municipal decree prohibits the practice of fishing and this measure seems reasonable to me.
From memory, these parks are a gift from the DELMAS family to the city of La Rochelle.
There are actually two legacies. One at the end of the 19th century by the CHARRUYER family who paid the necessary money for the purchase of this 40-hectare park which was initially military land and the other of a more modest area, approximately 6 hectares, bequeathed by the DELMAS family of shipowners in 1961. Whatever the history, it is a fabulous lung of oxygen for the people of Rochelle.