The jolly voicemail message on Cyril Pain’s mobile phone tells callers that if he doesn’t answer, “I must be out getting a suntan on my boat”. But this is no time for jokes in France’s oyster industry, the largest producer of the fleshy silver molluscs in Europe.
Mr Pain is the third generation of oyster farmers in his family on the Ile d’Oléron in south-western France where the bulk of the country’s shellfish production is harvested. He says that a combination of fatal disease, climate change and pollution has proved so devastating to the oyster beds that “the whole industry is threatened”.
On Tuesday, he joined about 300 shellfish farmers alarmed by the calamitous mortality rates, who dumped the shells of oysters, mussels and scallops outside administrative offices in La Rochelle.
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