La pêche au thon sur la côte basque poursuit sa modernisation

Five years have passed since the writing of our first report on "tuna fishing on the Basque coast and its recent evolution." From 1952 to 1956, five campaigns enabled St-Jean-de-Luz to impose its domination as the first French tuna fishing harbour, and gave it, in addition to some great investment means, an indisputable experience and technical advance in live bait fishing. But these advances gave way to the usual downside and, as often, posed more problems than they solved. In 1956, we cannot deal with the success of St-Jean-de-Luz, without raising the issue of the battle it will have to fight to stay alive in the near future. Since 1950, when winter sardine stocks started thinning, our Basque fishermen have had to focus on tuna fishing. [...]