Fish quotas spark blockades in French ports
Yachtsmen planning cross-Channel cruises this season need to take stock of the growing anger being expressed by French fishermen who blockaded Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk yesterday and who are threatening weeks of war over restrictive fishing quotas.
They used trawlers – flying skull and crossbone flags – roped together in lines, steel cables and chains to block the ports and held up ferries and other traffic.
On land roads into the ports were blocked by parked cars and vans or barricades of rubbish and burning tyres.
Last year YM (August 2008) reported on a summer of discontent from Dunkirk to La Rochelle when yachtsman experienced ramming, flares fired at them, props and rudders fouled by lines, boarding, salvos of beer bottles and drunken taunts all from French fishermen.