French waters have a third of marine protected areas. Like, for example, the Pertuis Charentais: 4,500 square kilometers off La Rochelle. In this protected area, much of the fishing comes from bottom trawling, a practice authorized by the European Union. “Europe gave us bottom trawl licenses, and we do bottom trawling all year round,” explains Christophe Gaillot, skipper-fisherman in La Rochelle.
However, bottom trawl fishing is considered devastating by environmentalists: they denounce the harmful effects caused by the nets which scrape the seabed. For Elodie Martinie-Cousty of the France Nature Environnement association, and member of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE), “if we authorize deep-sea trawling in these so-called protected areas, we prevent ourselves from having any possibility of having fishermen tomorrow and the sustainability of fishing.”
To avoid this, a group of environmental MEPs has just proposed to the European Union to“prohibit the use of bottom trawling in all marine protected areas”. A proposal emptied of its substance yesterday, by an amendment from the Liberal Democrats (Renaissance group), who intend to limit it to strictly protected marine areas… That is less than two percent of French territorial waters, and mainly located overseas.
“This amendment is useless,” gets angry Caroline Roose, the environmentalist MEP behind the initial proposal. “Bottom trawls are already prohibited in strictly protected marine areas! It’s a decoy.”
Ecologists denounce a concession made to the fishing lobby by the group of Renaissance MEPs… which justifies its position by a lack of scientific studies on the question.
French marine protected areas
Amendment n°4 to the own-initiative report “A sustainable blue economy within the Union”
“Arm wrestling over bottom trawling in European Union marine protected areas”, The worldMay 3, 2022
Non-exhaustive list.