Mussel Farming
Moulds of mussel beds

Mussels were first produced in the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel in 1954. The annual production is now estimated at 10,000 tonnes. A request for an AOC quality label is currently in progress. To date, nearly 300 people live from mussel farming in the area.

The mussel bed technique : very young mussel larvae are caught in the spring on coconut fibre ropes on the Charente and Vendée coast. They are then put in the Bay for a maturing phase, after which they are finally rolled around the beds. These are stakes that are driven into the shore and to which the mussels are fixed.
They are harvested a year to 18 months later. The harvesting is carried out from the barge of an amphibian boat especially adapted to the conditions in the Bay.

  Moulds of mussel beds

Difficulties

For many years, professionals from the Bay have experienced difficulties in farming their concessions :
- For the oyster farmers, the plots closest to land are silting up, resulting in unfavourable working conditions and difficulties in obtaining a high quality product.
- For mussel farmers, the production furthest to the west, or the area know as Saint-Benoît (towns of Hirel and of Vivier-sur-Mer) has recorded a much lower yield than that of the areas further to the east.

To overcome these difficulties, the Section Régionale Conchylicole (S.R.C) (Regional mussel farming group) for North Brittany has decided with the aid of the Département Management for Maritime Affairs, to reorganize mussel farming in the Bay of Cancale and Mont-Saint-Michel.
This will allow marine culture farms in the Cancale and Mont-Saint-Michel area to continue and ensure optimisation of the biomass quality.

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