Qome 150 shellfish farmers, fishermen and environmental protection organizations gathered Thursday morning in Morlaix (Finistère) to denounce the degradation of water quality in Brittany’s shellfish basins.
First gathered along a quay, the demonstrators then marched towards the city center with banners on which one might read: “We are on the edge of shit”.
Some shellfish farmers symbolically blocked the port locks for regarding an hour using barges, also lighting smoke bombs.
“For around thirty years, we have seen that the quality of the water on the coast has been deteriorating,” Goulven Brest, president of the Regional Committee for Shellfish Farming in North Brittany (CRCBN) at the origin of the project, told AFP. gathering.
“As much as we have restored the situation at the level of the rivers, as much on the coast we have done nothing”, he denounced, regretting that “the investments which should have been made for 30 years” had “not been made”.
“We cannot continue to work in these conditions,” he said, regretting the regular administrative closure of fishing areas due to poor water quality.
The Morlaix oyster production basin, “like other Breton shellfish basins, presents multiple alterations in the quality of its waters”, assures the CRCBN in a press release, citing microbiological contamination, the development of green algae or the phytoplankton bloom.
Shellfish are filter-feeding organisms that are particularly vulnerable to water pollution.
The CRCBN calls in particular for a “provisional suspension of building permit authorizations”, the “treatment” of “identified and well-known black spots” or even the establishment of bacteriological and microbiological standards on all discharges upstream of sensitive areas.
24/02/2022 13:08:47 – Morlaix (France) (AFP) – © 2022 AFP
