Arcachon Bay

The Bassin d'Arcachon is a vast enclosed bay — one of the largest in France — covering about 150 square kilometres at high tide. It is not a natural harbour in the conventional sense but a huge tidal lagoon, fed by the Eyre river from the inland Landes and opened to the Atlantic by a narrow gap between two sand spits. The tides here are dramatic: the bay drains almost completely at low water, leaving exposed mudflats and sandbanks that attract enormous flocks of waders and wildfowl.

The bay's main activities are oyster farming and sailing. The oyster beds occupy large sections of the shallows, tended by flat-bottomed boats called pinasses — the traditional wooden vessel of the Arcachon basin. Sailing schools and yacht hire are available at several points around the shore. The southeastern corner of the bay, around Gujan-Mestras, has the highest concentration of oyster farmers and is the best place to buy oysters direct from the producers' cabins along the harbour.

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The bay produces around ten thousand tonnes of oysters per year — roughly a fifth of all French oyster production. The industry nearly collapsed in 2008 when a disease wiped out nearly 80% of the juvenile oysters, but the farming families adapted by sourcing more disease-resistant stock from Portugal and Japan, and production has largely recovered. The oysters carry a distinctive iodine-rich flavour from the bay's mix of ocean and river water.