Panoramic of the Bassin d'Arcachon

Panoramic of the Bassin d’Arcachon

Introduction :

The Bassin d’Arcachon landscape is not broken, hatched or dismantled contrary to mountainous landscapes or some big city districts. Its infinite straight coasts, its alignment of dunes and typical huts, are out of the ordinary that usually required the pictures. The eyes sweep from right to left, flirting with the skyline. This panoramic of the Bassin d’Arcachon aims at giving back freedom to your eyes.

Sand and Water :

The Bassin is just the former outlet of the Eyre in the Ocean. This river from this Landes ended as a wide estuary. The dunes, for their parts, had an important role in the formation of the “Golf de Gascogne” coast. Shaped by the sand caught by the wind on the continental platform glacis 9000 years ago, while the water was going up due to the last interglacial, it finally set a long undulation of dunes on the coast. Besides, the flows of the swell, getting back the accumulated sand as well as most of the Gironde alluviums, made a big difference. It’s been five thousands years since these flows tried to stop the outlet of the river, however, the Bassin d’Arcachon never closed in spite of the advances and moving back of the Cap Ferret peak and the bulk of the channels. By the way, these channels take up a particular position : just above deep faults which interest oil tanker, and at the end of the former Eyre estuary in which the huge motions tides – more important during ebb tide than during swell because of the terrestrial waters that pour into the Bassin – were linked with the shapes of the sandbank, without closing the Bassin.

A maritime swamp

The former estuary became a maritime swamp of 156 km2 which empties more or less in two thirds in every tide. It only reamins in low tide 41 km2 of the channels drawing the tentacles of an octopus. The strong current of the tides, which pour into the channels at 1.20m/s in the stream and 1.70 in the ebb tide of deep waters, led to forget the Eyre. Rocked(tossed) by tides, sediments which enter the Pond differ according to the speeds of the more or less fast currents. Near The ocean: sandbanks in the more or less unrefined grains(beads), on dishes east of the Ile aux oiseaux: more or less soft muds of the matches where we often move forward that with wooden skates which leave with leu surface naked such to those of the legs of birds. The muddy pond Is lined with a slender cliff which bounds the salty meadows of solid clay covered with a vegetation quiet recover only the tides of very strong coefficient (from 90 to 120). All this: benches, tatchs and salty meadows establish the maritime ground, the property of State since Colbert who defined it as being the surface covered in the strongest equinoctial tides.

Are we going to cultivate the sea ?

The Bassin, this oasis in the Moor, had its coalmen, its foresters, its wine growers, its farmers, its craftsmen, but especially its sailors - seized in the Report(Fine) of the maritime Fishermen of Masson du Parc in 1727. And the oysters that we dredged were lacking there in the XIXth century. The complaints of the sea fishermen moved to Paris, where the Emperor make Coste, doctor and professor of embryogénie in

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