Once considered a cheap family appetizer, is the whelks platter fast becoming a luxury dish?
The question is now on the table.
In mid-November, on the shelves of Norman fishmongers, as in Caen, the kilo of cooked whelks rose to 20€.
In Courseulles-sur-Mer, still in Calvados, or in Cherbourg in Manche, it was around €15 compared to less than… €7 in previous years at the same time.
More than the impact of the rise in the cost of diesel on the margins of fishermen, professionals explain this surge in prices by the scarcity of the resource.
In question, once again, the warming of the sea of about +1.5 degrees.
To discover
Prime Macron 2022: conditions, amount, date of payment... how does it work?
“In the western Channel, we have gone from 13,500 tonnes landed in 2012 to less than 8,000 tonnes annually in recent years, i.e. 40% less, while at the same time the water temperature now rises to 20 degrees in summer against less than 18 before”
, observes Josse Sarazin, project manager with the Normandy Fraîcheur Mer association, based in Granville.
Mainly fished in the sandy bottoms of the North Atlantic, from northern Brittany to the Channel coasts, the whelk prefers cold waters to reproduce.
As temperatures rise, these molluscs tend to burrow deeper into the mud, grow more slowly and become more difficult to fish.
Hence the surge in prices: currently at 7.20 euros per kilo at the auction against less than 2.80 last year.
For the holiday season, prices could soar even more.
Dimitri Rogoff, president of the Regional Fisheries Committee of Normandy, recognizes it lip service:
"I did not think I would say that one day: but the whelk risks becoming a luxury product!"
He wants proof of this in the evolution of fishing zones.
"For a few years, we have observed that the old southern limit of the Norman-Breton golf course has tended to go up ever a little further north"
, he notes.
Every other Friday
Until then considered as the second source of income for Norman fishermen, the decrease in this emblematic shell of the Bay of Granville is a new blow for the fishing industry after the disappearance for several years of wild mussels from the east coast of the English Channel. ;
also due to warming waters.
Some shipping lines are even already considering conversions.
“Recently two bulotiers registered in Granville requested a double license to diversify into scallops, whose biomass is increasing
,” observes Josse Sarazin.
The scarcity of the resource is beginning to seriously worry the sector.
Today, nearly 200 boats fish for whelk in Normandy, including 150 exclusive “bulotiers”.
In an attempt to curb the disappearance of the mollusc, the Regional Fisheries Committee is currently considering proposing, from 2023, a ban on fishing for whelk every other Friday, while its fishing is already totally prohibited on the west coast in January.