At first glance, apart from a telltale little hole between its eyes, the inert fish looks like any other dead whiting.

But its flesh is much tastier thanks to the ancient Japanese method by which it was slaughtered: ikejime, also known as spiking.

Practiced for centuries in Japan, the technique has been adopted only recently in France, and 30-year-old Brittany fisherman Daniel Kerdavid is one of only a handful of French purveyors of ikejime-slaughtered fish.