Oysters and shellfish, from the English Channel to the Étang de Thau

On the Normandy coast, the sea retreats so far that it reveals a vast foreshore, and this is where the oysters grow. Curiously, they do not reproduce here: waters that are too cold and a lack of rocks prevent the natural reproduction of the cupped oyster in the Channel, so oyster farmers buy their spat elsewhere. Their oysters boast no fewer than five crus, from the robust flavour of the western Cotentin coast to the nutty notes of Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, and the Normandy oyster has been recognised with a PGI (IGP) since 24 October 2023. Further south, the Baie de Granville fishes for whelks using pots baited with fish or crustaceans, from small day-boats that return to port every evening; it received its PGI in 2019. Normandy also lands more than two-thirds of the king scallops caught in France, a large share of which comes from the Baie de Seine, described as the largest bed in Europe: in autumn, crates arrive in the early morning on the quays of Port-en-Bessin, Grandcamp-Maisy or Dieppe.

At the foot of the Mont, the tide can rise by sixteen metres, one of the greatest tidal ranges in Europe. Yet the wooden stakes striating the foreshore are relatively recent: the bouchots were first driven in during the late 1950s by mussel farmers from the Baie de l'Aiguillon, on the borders of Vendée and Charente. The bouchot mussels from the bay, under a PDO (AOP) since 2011, are harvested from July until January or February. On the other side of the bay, Cancale was once the oyster capital of France: Louis XIV, it is said, ate them every morning. It was also here, in 1858, that spat collectors were first introduced to capture oyster larvae — the dawn of oyster farming in Brittany. Brittany oysters are today divided into twelve crus, from Cancale to the Golfe du Morbihan.

The Côtes-d'Armor king scallop is fished only from October to April, two days a week. The rule protects the bed, and it has a consequence well known to food lovers: the scallop reproduces from April to September, and fishing ceases before the coral can develop, hence its completely white meat. In 2022, the Baie de Saint-Brieuc fishery became the first scallop fishery in France to be MSC-certified. Erquy and Saint-Quay-Portrieux are its main landing ports, where tourist offices organise guided tours of the fish auction.

In southern Finistère, the little Bélon river gave its name to the flat oyster, Brittany's native species: it was the estuary's pioneering oyster farmers who made it famous. Nestled between the Aven and the Bélon, Riec-sur-Bélon proclaims itself its capital. The flat oysters arrive here around three years of age, having hatched in other Breton waters, and finish maturing in oyster beds running along the riverbanks for four kilometres, where the river's fresh water mingles with seawater to the rhythm of the tides. It is this ‘cure’ that gives them their nutty flavour. They can be bought directly from oyster farmers across the small harbours of the estuary.

At the mouth of the Vilaine, a schooner captain named M. Blanche is said to have had the idea of planting bouchots in the river in the late 1870s. Since then, Pénestin has made a name for itself as the mussel capital: around thirty enterprises farm mussels here across 215 hectares of concessions, and bouchot mussel cultivation in Pénestin is listed in France's inventory of intangible cultural heritage.

Bouin was originally an island of salt, and oysters only became a farmed crop here in 1947, when oyster farmers from Marennes-Oléron and Fouras in Charente arrived to explore the Baie de Bourgneuf, then untouched by any shellfish farming. Isle de Bouin oysters have since been raised around four ports, including Port du Bec, nicknamed the ‘Chinese port’ for its wooden jetties. A little further south, in Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, autumn marks the return of the pink prawn, fished with pots at depths of up to forty-five metres, an hour's boat ride from the port. It is sold at the fish auction between 04:30 and 05:30, and celebrated every November at the Apérose, held in the auction hall itself.

In Marennes-Oléron, oysters do not merely grow at sea: they finish their journey in claires, shallow ponds where they are matured and take on a finer flavour, less iodised than that of open-sea oysters. Certain claires become covered with a micro-alga, the blue navicula, whose pigment tints the oyster's gills green — hence the famous ‘green Marennes’ of which Louis XIV was, it is said, particularly fond. As early as 1698, the intendant of the Navy at Rochefort noted their reputation. Marennes Oléron oysters have held a PGI since 2009.

Bassin d'Arcachon oysters were already gracing Roman tables in the 4th century, but their farming dates from the Second Empire: in 1856, Napoleon III regulated oyster culture and created the first imperial beds in Arcachon, entrusted to the naturalist Jean-Michel Coste, who invented the first spat collector there in 1859. In 1865, a stonemason, Michelet, had the idea of liming the tiles to which juvenile oysters attach themselves, so they could be detached without being damaged — a technique still used today. The Bassin has since become dotted with villages of wooden cabanes, at Gujan-Mestras, La Teste-de-Buch or on the Cap-Ferret peninsula, where visitors come to taste them right by the water.

In the Mediterranean, there is no tide to uncover the beds: on the Étang de Thau, oysters are suspended beneath tables. The technique originated in Bouzigues in 1925, when a local mason, Louis Tudesq, developed the first farming method, known as ‘the Pyramid’, alongside other villagers from Bouzigues. Today, 450 oyster farmers work on the lagoon, whose 2,500 tables stretch out at the foot of Mont Saint-Clair. Yet shellfish were farmed here long before: in Gallo-Roman times, oysters from the lagoon were already being shipped all the way to Rome. Bouzigues oysters are their heirs.