Arcachon (Municipality, Gironde, France)

Last modified: 2005-04-09 by ivan sache
Keywords: gironde | arcachon |
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by Arnaud Leroy

• Presentation of Arcachon
• Municipal flag of Arcachon
• Common variant of the flag of Arcachon
• Cercle de la Voile d'Arcachon
• Yacht Club du Bassin d'Arcachon

See also:

• France
• Gironde (Department, France)

Presentation of Arcachon

The city and sea resort of Arcachon (15,000 inhabitants) is located on the Bassin d'Arcachon (Arcachon Basin). The flat, sandy coast between the estuary of Gironde and the Pyrénées mountain is nicknamed Côte d'Argent (Silver Coast).

The Arcachon Basin (c. 15,000 ha) is a brackish pond linked to the Atlantic Ocean by a narrow bottleneck (width 3 km). Oysters have been "fished" in Arcachon Basin since ages: the Latin poets Ausone (310-395) and Sidoine Apollinaire (431-487), as well as Gargantuta's father François Rabelais (1494-1553) enjoyed them a lot. In 1859, the naturalist Victor Coste established the scientific basis of oyster-farming. Wild oyster beds were nearly exhausted at that time. Initially, the gravette, or Arcachon flat oyster (Ostrea edulis) was more common in the Basin than the Portuguese hollow oyster (Crassostrea angulata). In 1920, a disease killed all the flat oysters but the hollow ones were immune. In 1970, another disease killed all the Portuguese oysters, and Japanese oysters (Crassostrea gigas) were imported to replace them.The oyster production of Arcachon Basin is c. 18,000 t per year and stretches over 1,800 ha of beds. Most spat used in Brittany, Normandy, Languedoc and Netherlands oyster-farms is produced in the Arcachon Basin.

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