In Fécamp, fish is (also) a women's affair

This page needs JavaScript enabled to function properly.

In short strides, Martine Couturier crosses the pea puree that coats the Bérigny basin. You can barely make out the silhouette of the coast of the Virgin. It is 7:01 a.m. in Fécamp (Seine-Maritime). It smells of cold and smoke in the Fish Market, a store that looks like a warehouse. The team bustles about in aprons, boots and blue gloves amid the crash of shovelfuls of ice.

100 “Fragments of France”

Six months before the presidential election, Le Monde paints an unprecedented portrait of the country. 100 journalists and 100 photographers traveled the field in September to depict France today. A nuanced picture, sometimes tender, often hard, always far from prejudice. These 100 reports can be found in a large digital format.

The boss, Nathalie Lecanu, has her hands in winkles, which gives her a doubt. "No, it smells like the tide, you didn't add any pepper!" “, answers Paul Lionis, who returns to stall bags of mussels and baskets of oysters in the van which delivers to the restaurants in the area: in Fécamp, Yport, Etretat.

How to stain cabinets at that lmao

— Holly Millet Thu Apr 04 03:40:31 +0000 2013

We speak little. Everyone knows what to do. In the ice that covers the vast auction table, Martine digs rough spots with the flat of her hand so that the goods do not slip on the ground. "I have little woolen gloves underneath," she says. Dominique Ouin's knife carves fillets in John Dory and cod. Théo Daussy applies himself to arranging pyramids of smoked salmon fillets, the pride of the house. The Fish Market looks like a big family.

The sea is a story that runs over several generations among the Lecanu, says Nathalie, captain of this fishmonger's ship, grandfather's gold signet ring in her left hand, chain cigarettes in her right. In this family of "right-wing Catholics who went on pilgrimage to Lourdes", his father grew up spoiled in the opulence of the heyday of Fécamp, France's leading cod fishing port. The Lecanu, one of the four families of shipowners in Fécamp, then owned five boats for coastal fishing and another in Boulogne for campaigns lasting several months. Then the Canadian quotas, at the end of the 1970s, sounded the death knell of four centuries of big fishing. The grandfather sells the fleet, but the salt meats are doing well. The Lecanu adapt. Today, says Nathalie, “we are not rich people, but we are not poor people”. They are working people, anyway.

Nathalie knows all about her employees

The morning delivery arrived at 6:30 a.m. by courier, coming from Dieppe, via the Rouen and Boulogne platforms and, before that, Rungis. “It all comes down to that,” she explains. A large part of the fish comes from Brittany, Quiberon or Concarneau. Watching in the darkness of the office, his brother, Philippe, buys from the computer in eight auctions.

You have 80.08% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.