Marseillan (Municipality, Hérault, France)

Last modified: 2004-12-22 by ivan sache
Keywords: herault | marseillan | disc (yellow) | crab (green) |
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by Arnaud Leroy

Source: Dominique Cureau

• Presentation of Marseillan
• Municipal flag of Marseillan

See also:

• France
• Hérault (Department, France)

Presentation of Marseillan

Marseillan (6,000 inhabitants) is located on the lagoon of Thau, on the coast of Languedoc between Sète and Béziers.Marseilles, but there is no evidence of such an origin.

Marseillan is today divided into two boroughs, Marseillan-Ville, whose port of commerce was very active in the XIXth century, and Marseillan-Plage, built on the mouth of the grau de Pisse-Saumes to the Mediterranean Sea. The lagoon of Tahu (étang de Thau) stretches over 7,500 hectares and is linked to the Mediterranean Sea by two narrow bottlenecks locally called grau. The southern grau is the grau de Pisse-Saumes (Pisses refers to piss and Saumes to brackish - saumâtre - water). The lagoon of Thau includes the biggest zostera patch in Europe. The zostera (eelgrass?) is a marine plant forming dense patches used by several marine organisms to live and breed. A part of the lagoon is made of abandoned salt marshes, colonized today by birds. The main activity in the lagoon of Thau are mussel, oyster (oysters from Bouzigues) and shellfish farming.

Marseillan is also