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Well known for its landscapes and its invigorating bike rides, the island of Groix also stands out with its mussels reared in the open sea, up to 20 meters deep.
It is an open-sea mussel, the Groix mussel. To pick it up, you need a boat with the only producer on the island, Julien Romagnié. But before having beautiful shells, good ropes were needed. “With a horizontal line, the carrier, for 300 meters, and every meter there is a descent, another rope of five meters, where the mussels are”decipher it mussel farmer. During the spawning period, these coconut fiber ropes will fix the mussel larvae underwater.
Particularly plump mussels
The culture ropes are stronger and thicker so that the mussels can cling to them and grow for another year or so. We can then harvest them, rope after rope. “The rope can weigh up to 80/100 kilos per rope”, explains Julien Romagnié. Their weight can quickly increase with fish, sea urchins and starfish, which come to help themselves. But the presence of these predators is also a guarantee of the extraordinary quality of this water. The shells feed on them and are plumper than their cousins, raised on the coasts. These molds help absorb CO2 from the atmosphere by turning it into limestone.