The run-up to Christmas should be a time of brisk business and high spirits for the oyster farmers of France. In anticipation of the lavish plates that will be served up and savored in dining rooms from Paris to Perpignan, demand is soaring and orders are flooding in.
The mood among beleaguered producers in the Bay of Arcachon, however, is far from celebratory. They know that many of this year’s delicacies will have been stolen from their harvesters — and they suspect that rogue members of the profession are the culprits. Local police say some 15 tonnes to 16 tonnes of oysters have been stolen this year from under the noses of the farmers in the bassin — a threefold increase on last year.
The sharp increase in thefts, a familiar problem in the world’s fourth-largest oyster producer, is blamed on the herpes-like virus that has blighted the shellfish for the past two years. The rarer the product, insiders said, the more tempting was its theft.
What makes the trend particularly unpleasant for the farmers in the Bay of Arcachon, France’s leading oyster-farming area on the southwestern Atlantic coast, is that they do not believe that outsiders are responsible for the rustling. Instead they point the finger at some of their colleagues.
“As there has been a high rate of mortality, the producers are lacking shells. And as businesses have been more than affected in recent years, some of them no longer hesitate to replenish their stocks by helping themselves to their neighbors’,” Arcachon oyster farmers president Olivier Laban said.
As a result, festive cheer is in short supply in the bay, a crucial location for France’s 1 billion euro (US$1.49 billion) per year industry.
“It’s a big disappointment and I’m almost ashamed to say it,” Laban told La Depeche. “It’s awful because it creates a kind of suspicion and a bad atmosphere among us. If it goes on, soon we’ll be hiding our oyster sacks like you hide gold bars.”
Vincent Eyquem, a farmer from the village of Gujan-Mestras who fell victim to the thieves last month, agreed.
“Next year we’re going to have to have a padlock on each sack,” he said, adding that two tonnes of oysters that he had packed and were ready for delivery “vanished” overnight.
He estimates the loss at 8,500 euros — a high price to pay in an industry already struggling to cope with the effects of the OsHV-1 virus, which is believed to have killed billions of young oysters in French waters since last year.
A spokesman for the Arcachon nautical police brigade, whose job it is to patrol the coastline and keep a watch out for unusual activity in the oyster farms, agreed that most of the time the thefts were carried out by professionals.
“You can’t be an amateur sailor. To steal oysters in those quantities you’ve got to have a proper boat,” he said.
He emphasized the difficulty in catching the culprits.
“We know that they go out either well before low tide or well after low tide,” he said. “But it’s very hard to know which boat, at which location, at which time.”
To combat the rise in thefts, police have stepped up their presence at sea this season and have increased their helicopter surveillance of the area. They are also trying to carry out checks on any boats returning to shore unusually late at night.
Laban and other farmers, however, are pushing for more effective action to discourage the thieves, including harsher penalties for those caught.
They say they would like to see those found guilty “thrown out of the profession for life.”
At the moment those found guilty are subject to a fine; a prison sentence is only applicable to re-offenders. Three oyster farmers, successfully prosecuted by police at the beginning of this year, are still working in the bassin having paid their fines, much to the annoyance of other producers.
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