Damien Roux, fifth-generation fisherman of Villefranche-sur-Mer
I shivered in the chilly dawn air. The rising sun was a splendour over the port of Villefranche-sur-Mer, but I was distracted. My rendezvous with a man on a little boat called Le Charles Louis had been loosely arranged for first light so I’d set my alarm for crazy-o’clock to be there early. Yet none of the boats had names painted on, nor were there any men aboard, and the quay was deserted.
One of the last fishermen of his kind
Commissioned by GEO magazine as photographer for a cover feature on the cuisine of Nice, I was looking forward to this shoot. I was to photograph the work of Damien Roux, one of the last coastal fishermen of the French Riviera, aboard his pointu (the traditional type of wooden fishing boat in Provence). In an era where small-scale, natural food growing and gathering is replaced by technology-dominated farming and large-scale food production, witnessing and documenting the human activities honed over generations to bring good food from nature to plate makes for the kind of reportage I really care about. So I was hoping I hadn’t ‘missed the boat’.
Mackerel, sea bream and bonito
Eventually, however, Damien appeared. A man of few words, he proffered an old towel and invited me to clamber down into the fishy-smelling pointu below – which had barely enough room for him, his nets and ice boxes, let alone a photographer too. I was glad that I had wrapped my camera gear in plastic and dug out my rubber boots, as I clambered up to the prow and squashed myself against the wet wood. Moorings untied, we motored out towards the sun, across a sea of glass.
No rest for man or fish
Damien doesn’t travel far, taking more or less the same route across the bay towards Cap Ferrat every morning and every evening…7 days of the week…365 days of the year. He stops where colourful floats indicate his net, drops anchor and winds in the line, to haul in fish who’ve swum into his trap. As the 150 m-long net, deep enough to reach the seabed this close to shore, cranks in, he removes debris and untangles stragglers. Then, towards the end of the line, out of the broiling water, fish flapping in their desperate fight for life, he scoops his catch into the boat. With icy cold, bare hands, he sorts through the net. The little fish are lucky, thrown back into the sea for another day; the bigger ones are put into ice boxes. Once he is done, Damien lifts anchor and slowly motors the pointu, to wind out the now empty net and lay the line again for next time.
Catch of the day
Sea wolves and octopuses
In times past, the people of the Côte d’Azur never used to go far out to sea in search of supper. Sea urchins, anchovies and the sedentary, bony little rock fish that were the ingredients for simple fish soup, used to be plentiful along the coast. Pointu boats at rest were once part of the regular beach scenery, hauled up onto the pebbles in Cannes and Nice. Yet people ate more soup than the fish could keep up with, and numbers of rock fish have faded to near inexistence (Marseille‘s bouillabaisse fish soup has gone from a pauper’s staple to a gourmet rarity). Today, depending on the season – oh yes, there are seasons for fish, and unlike the two-legged visitors to the French Riviera, fewer arrive in summer – Damien might catch mackerel, sea bream, or, with some difficulty, sea bass. The latter, named loup de mer, ‘sea wolf’, due to their exceptional wild intelligence, swim in and out of nets at will – and won’t ever be duped by a fishing line.
Laying his empty net in the shadow of Cap Ferrat
Perhaps the cleverest creature that Damien found in his net was an octopus, making our outing a ‘lucky one’. He catches this rare prize only once or twice a month at best (there are very few left in the bay) and I tried not to think about a rather moving documentary I had seen a short while before about an octopus – its sensitivity, interaction with a human observer and its surprising intelligence – as he drew one into the boat. My heart leaped, as no sooner caught than it was off again, cleverly squirming out of the ice box and heading to the edge of the boat. But Damien was too quick for it, and got straight on the phone to a buyer, who arranged to take it a couple of hours later, for 30€.
Man V Octopus. There could only be one winner.
Once there were 70
Over 70 pointus were still operating out of Villefranche-Sur-Mer’s port in the late 1940s. Now only Damien’s boat and one other is left. Yet, despite the decline in activity, I was surprised by how small the haul was that morning – and Damien said that sometimes he catches nothing at all. Under the cliffs of billionaire’s haven Cap Ferrat, where the price of property can exceed 200 000€ per square metre, Damien quietly relaid his net. He has had to take another job to supplement his meager fishing income – ferrying tourists from cruise ships berthed in the bay to Villefranche on day trips.
Poignant sign of the times: as a fisherman packs up, a paddle-boarder starts out
Fish don’t come fresher
Back in the harbour, Damien leapt ashore with his iceboxes and I followed him to a little lock-up, squashed in between two swanky seafront cafés. He dug out a recent treasure from the fridge, a gigantic amberjack fish of which he was justifiably proud, for an obligatory photograph. His dad, who had popped down from the village to collect the day’s catch, looked on.
The day was getting warm. Spending an extended period with fish splatter flying in close proximity is neither good for a photographer’s work (a longer lens hood would have made for cleaner optics) nor one’s general appearance. I changed out of my boots and wiped my hair but was conscious that I didn’t look or smell entirely Riviera-presentable as I made the short walk up to the village market, where most of Damien’s catch gets sold (anything left is bought by local restaurants).
End of the supply chain: Damien’s dad at the market stall
Under the platanes (plane trees), a few stalls were huddled together and I quickly spotted Damien’s dad, arranging fish on ice under a parasol. There was no sign at the stall, nothing to indicate the origin of the fish, nor of their astoundingly short journey to this point of sale – short in terms of both distance and time. In a world where we are conditioned to accept food supply chains that cross the world, deny the seasons and falsify natural freshness, I wanted to shout aloud to everyone within earshot: “Do you have any idea how fresh this fish is? Are you aware of the zero miles it has travelled, of its nonexistent carbon footprint? Can you imagine anything more free-range, more organic, more natural than this?!” But it seemed unnecessary. As people quietly wandered over to the stall, and the number of fish there quickly dwindled, it looked like the locals already knew…
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