European Fishermen Brace for Brexit
British fishermen may end up having Europe’s richest waters all to themselves. But who’s going to eat all the fish?
Fishermen use a winch to transport crates of fish from a trawler’s hold.
Photographer: Marlene Awaad/BloombergThe Jannetje Cornelis fishing trawler was built two years ago in Spain. It’s owned by a company in the Netherlands and its crew is largely Dutch. Its home port and registration are in the English city of Hull. And it frequently sells its catch in France, from where it’s typically trucked to Holland for processing before being shipped to supermarkets in Italy and Spain.
“We go where the fish is, and this time of year it’s in the English Channel,” skipper Peter de Boor says as a light snow falls over the docks of the French port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he has just finished unloading five tons of squid and mullet largely caught in U.K. waters.