REPORTAGE. In Brittany, tensions around the new plan to fight against green algae

From her window, Nicole Legall sees the sea… and green algae. Based in Douarnenez, in Finistère, for thirty years, she is now used to this landscape. “It means no longer being able to swim on the beach that you have frequented for a whole part of your life, it means that you have to put up with the smellsshe breathes. It’s been almost twenty years that environmental associations say that we are going straight into the wall. There we are.”

>> Green algae, the endless struggle?

No green algae in Douarnenez this year. Brown, filamentous, another species has appeared. “They are often in the sea but it only takes one day when the algae wash up on the beach to understand how much the ecosystem is in danger”assures Jean Hascoet of the Baie de Douarnenez Environnement (BDZE) association.

To monitor the proliferation of this invasive phenomenon, the Center for the Study and Valorization of Algae flies over the sectors concerned. Only two bays have been affected this year. For engineer Sylvain Balu, “we are still on a downward trend”. “We are already seeing that in dry years we have much less algae than we had a few years ago”he tempers.

“But we can clearly see that we are not yet at the end of the line.”

Sylvain Balu, engineer at the Center for the Study and Valorization of Algae

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It is the use of nitrates in agriculture that feeds these green algae. Two control plans have already been set up. But, for Arnaud Clugery, director of the association Eau et Rivières de Bretagne, these measures do not attack the roots of the phenomenon: “The structural problem is the number of animals bred in Brittany. There are too many. We must reduce these numbers, and not do it anyhow: we must support this reduction. For that, there are normally l public money which is called the ‘common agricultural policy.’ And, unfortunately, we note that this is not at the service of a new agricultural project but that it only maintains the existing one, which has led to this type of pollution that is green tides.”

A year and a half ago, the Court of Auditors had already strongly criticized the action of the public authorities on the subject.