On his trawler in Saint-Malo, one of France’s most important ports for scallops and crabs, Laurent Mevel is fixing his nets. “We really want to protect the seas,” says the 60-year-old fisher. “But we’ve got crews, we’ve got employees.
“If you don’t fish any more, the fish will come from Ireland, from Scotland. Now the fish you buy from shops comes by plane. And costs less.”
The Mevel family has been fishing the waters off Brittany as long as they can remember. Beside him, Mevel’s father, Emile, 83, is also on the boat untangling nylon. Mevel’s 29-year-old son, Clément, is busying about. The family trawler catches fish, cuttlefish and “lots of scallops”.
But soon all that could be over, says Mevel, who claims environmental measures are slowly killing the fishing industry. “We’ll have to make do on peanuts,” he says. “We’ll become a heritage asset. That’s not what we want; we just want to work.”
This weekend, world leaders will gather in Nice, on the south coast of France, for a UN summit to tackle what they describe as a “global emergency” facing the world’s seas. Co-hosted by Costa Rica and France, which expects 70 heads of state to attend, the UN ocean conference (UNOC) seeks to build global unity on issues such as plastic pollution, industrial fishing and deep-sea mining to halt the decline of marine environments.
But the conference will also shine a spotlight on a difficult dilemma for its host, Emmanuel Macron. The French president has high ambitions for the summit, chief among them getting 60 nations to ratify the high seas treaty to protect biodiversity in international waters, agreed in 2023.
This would be enough to bring into force the treaty, which is crucial to meet a globally agreed biodiversity target of protecting 30% of the oceans by 2030, known as “30×30”.
Yet, in waters closer to home, Macron faces some serious opposition to his role as environmental protector. This comes from numerous voices within a powerful fishing industry that has been opposing efforts to limit the impact of bottom trawling, a destructive fishing method, off the French coast. Theirs is no small collective voice – because of its overseas territories, France has the world’s second-largest maritime area after the US.
Critics say that as a result, France is doing less than others to protect its seabed and biodiversity, by failing to ban bottom trawling in “protected” areas. France claims to have protected 33% of its ocean with specially designed marine protected areas (MPAs) but in reality 98% allow destructive activities and only 0.03% are strictly protected, the Oceana conservation organisation claims.
An open letter to Macron from 60 scientists and environmental experts, published by Le Figaro in March, drew unfavourable comparisons between the UNOC co-host and countries including Britain, Sweden and Greece, which are taking action to ban bottom trawling in protected areas. “Our international credibility is at stake,” they warned.
The European Union goes further than the 30×30 target, recommending that 10% of European coastal and marine waters be safeguarded under a “strict protection” regime. Environmentalists say France does not meet this recommendation or formally prohibit industrial activity, bar mining and mineral extraction.
Jean-Pierre Gattuso, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, believes France to be a leader in ocean science and protection. But bottom trawling in MPAs is a “dark spot” on the nation’s record, he says.
“Clearly it’s inappropriate to have bottom trawling in marine protected areas,” he says. “David Attenborough’s movie, Ocean, had footage showing just how destructive it is. This is a hot topic because there’s a conflict of usage.”
Macron is credited by many environmentalists for warning about deep-sea mining at the UNOC in Lisbon in 2022, where he said a legal framework was needed to stop it happening, and to prevent new activities “putting in danger these ecosystems”.
Later that year, at the COP climate summit in Egypt, he expressed opposition to deep-sea mining permits. The French government is working to build an international coalition calling for a ban. Supporters of his stance hope he will announce bold action again this year.
Tobias Troll, director of marine policy at the environmental coalition Seas at Risk, says: “The French and Macron court the media by shining the spotlight on the ocean, but when it comes to protecting ecosystems in MPAs or regulating fishing, we need action.
“In France mainland waters, not even 0.03% benefit from high protection, according to international standards,” he adds. “It’s basically nothing.”
Gauthier Carle, deputy director of Ocean & Climate Platform, a network of more than 100 research institutes, museums and NGOs, believes Macron is being held back by a fear of the potential political fallout.
“The French government fears announcing strong measures will annoy the fishermen. Maybe the ports will be blocked; maybe the fishermen could go further with the far right – and maybe they could cause trouble at the next election,” he says.
“I hope that Macron will say something transformative and bold, given the crisis of biodiversity and climate change.”
In response to criticisms over MPAs in French waters, the Élysée Palace declared that “an important announcement” would be made on the issue at the UN ocean conference.
“There are some points where we agree with the NGOs and scientific community – on the need for a strengthening of the level of protection in some marine protected areas – but we don’t focus only on bottom trawling,” the president’s office said.
Back in Saint-Malo, tensions are high. The waters close to the city are home to about 500 dolphins and have been declared an MPA. Campaign groups, such as the marine environmental charity Bloom, are keeping a watchful eye on these and other waters they claim are not being given the protection they are entitled to.
Bloom has published a red list of nearly 4,000 French trawlers it says fish in protected waters, and claims that industrial bottom-trawling accounts for 27% of landings of overexploited fish populations.
“We’re in the list of the famous 4,000 boats. Why?” Mevel says. “They’re idiots.”
He points to the boat berthed next to his, which is not on the list because it is 10cm below the 12-metre-long threshold above which Bloom counts a trawler as industrial. “He does the same thing as me,” Mevel says. “We do the same job, exactly the same thing.”
Mevel says that if it is done correctly, trawling is harmless. “We don’t destroy anything,” he says. “The mesh lets the small fish pass.”
Olivier Leprêtre, president of the Hauts-de-France regional fisheries committee, which covers ports such as Calais and Boulogne, says claims about bottom trawling are “a stigmatisation by certain charities that have led this discourse that it is necessary to ban trawling.
“Trawling has been practised since the dawn of time. There are still fish … the fishermen have always improved their fishing techniques.
“If we carry on in this direction,” he warns, “it’s goodbye to every French fisherman.”
