[01/06]
The sea gets into the Guérande marshes through a single gap about 500 m wide, between the port of Le Croisic and Pen-Bron, along two arms called the traicts. From there the étiers carry it to each saline. Water only runs in by gravity on medium and big tides, with a coefficient above 80, so the sluice is opened on those days and shut on the rest.
[02/06]
The first reservoir, and the deepest. Mud carried in by the tide settles out here, several centimetres of it a year, and is cleared every winter. It also holds water in reserve for the whole working season, February to October, while the banks are repaired and the salt is raked.
[03/06]
Much shallower: a few centimetres. A second settling, and the point where evaporation really begins. Seawater holds about 35 g of salt per litre; from here on every basin holds a little less water and a little more salt.
[04/06]
Long rectangular basins, worked one after another, where the salt climbs fastest. Their colour shows it: green algae at first, then an amber tint as carotene-rich Dunaliella salina and brine shrimp take over. Wind matters most here, then a thin layer of water, then sun.
[05/06]
The last reservoirs. They keep evaporating while storing the strong pink brine that refills the pans after each day, through narrow channels called sauniers. The pink comes from haloarchaea and Dunaliella, which thrive where almost nothing else can.
[06/06]
The crystallising pans, usually 20 to 100 m², with a clay floor the paludiers call la mère du marais. Under a centimetre of brine, typically 5 mm, the water warms fast. Edges slope gently over the first 50 cm so fleur de sel can gather there. Each pan gives about a tonne of salt a year.
07Prise de sel
Sel gris is raked from the floor of the pan. Fleur de sel is skimmed from its surface every evening with the lousse. This is the sel gris, from pan to heap.
[01]
The paludière walks round the pan pushing the water with the las, a rake with a very long handle and a rectangular beech blade. The waves skim off grey crusts and roll the grains that formed on the floor.
[02]
With as little clay as possible, the grains are drawn into ridges at the foot of the ladure, the small round platform on the bank beside each pan.
[03]
The salt is lifted onto the ladure and left to drain all night. Takes are daily at first, then every two or three days as the season goes on.
[04]
The next day each pile goes by wheelbarrow along the banks to the trémet, the platform at the end of the saline.
[05]
There the season’s heap grows, a barrow-load at a time: the mulon. It is our name because it is the whole year in one place.
08Weather
What dries a pan, in order of importance:
Rain dissolves fleur de sel, so it is picked fast. Before forecasts, paludiers watched the larva of a soldier fly, Stratiomys, which lives in the marsh: when it appeared, rain or a heavy dew was due within 48 hours, and they harvested.