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A phalanx of les bouchots, or wooden posts, covers some 115 square miles in the famed Bay of Mont St. Michel in Brittany, where about three hundred shellfish farmers grow a quarter of all the mussels produced in France—some 10,000 tons annually. Mussels, like oysters, are filter feeders that can help improve water quality. The forest of mussel posts, which are staked in rows about three miles offshore, was initially erected in the 1950s on the edge of the bay’s mudflats and worked by men in skiffs during the brief low tide before the sea came rushing back in, as a local saying goes, like a galloping horse. Given the 49-foot range between high and low tides, new amphibious boats like the Antares II with retractable wheels afford the mussel farmers more time to seed and harvest the mussel bags hung on the posts. The Antares II has a crew of two to run the big boat and six on the two smaller skiffs, and according to Captain François Hurtaud (right, at the helm, with his cousin Maxime Hurtaud), they harvest about 66 tons of mussels each year, 176 pounds from each post—three times the amount of moules de bouchots his grandfather once harvested with a crew of twenty. And if you are one of the millions of tourists who visit Mont St. Michel during mussel season between July and February, you can sample the sweet, orange-colored mussels from the bay. The local restaurants refuse to serve any others.

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A phalanx of les bouchots, or wooden posts, covers some 115 square miles in the famed Bay of Mont St. Michel in Brittany, where about three hundred shellfish farmers grow a quarter of all the mussels produced in France—some 10,000 tons annually. Mussels, like oysters, are filter feeders that can help improve water quality. The forest of mussel posts, which are staked in rows about three miles offshore, was initially erected in the 1950s on the edge of the bay’s mudflats and worked by men in skiffs during the brief low tide before the sea came rushing back in, as a local saying goes, like a galloping horse. Given the 49-foot range between high and low tides, new amphibious boats like the Antares II with retractable wheels afford the mussel farmers more time to seed and harvest the mussel bags hung on the posts. The Antares II has a crew of two to run the big boat and six on the two smaller skiffs, and according to Captain François Hurtaud (right, at the helm, with his cousin Maxime Hurtaud), they harvest about 66 tons of mussels each year, 176 pounds from each post—three times the amount of moules de bouchots his grandfather once harvested with a crew of twenty. And if you are one of the millions of tourists who visit Mont St. Michel during mussel season between July and February, you can sample the sweet, orange-colored mussels from the bay. The local restaurants refuse to serve any others.

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