Ria d’Etel : entre terre et mer, le joyau caché du littoral breton | Documentaire Nature – GD
When Guena goes to the Clams,
it’s not to pretend. I choose where I want to go, when I
want to go, and I come back when I want. But in general, you still need to
do an average of 20 kilos per day. In general. So we find them there. Yeah, just to serve. This is one of the best
spots, I like it. Well, it’s not for making
large quantities. I started
clamming when I was nine years old. I have 27 years of experience. It was my father who
showed me how to do it. If there’s bad weather,
there’s bad weather, I don’t want to go, I don’t go. What else is good? I choose where I go to work,
that’s mostly it. It’s mainly the freedom that we are
still given in this environment for the moment. That’s what I would say. What I’m looking for is something
big, that size. So. There you go, they’re plump. There are 30 of us here, my dear. The Tels River
is like the Morbihan mini-golf course. It’s a miniature golf course, after all. You have small islands,
you have currents, you have sea bases,
high tides like the Gulf of Morbihan. It is therefore a ria, a river where
fresh water would have let sea water in. A river valley with multiple
meanders where the peasants would be sailors and the seafarers,
land people. The Ria des Thèles has
many facets. Sometimes dotted with ten lots of coves,
forests and cultivated fields, sometimes so close to the open sea. Secret, the Riade Etel blurs
the lines and erases boundaries. It’s the countryside by the sea,
or the sea or the sea by the countryside. It depends. As with Guena, at Clams,
at Oysters, when the tide is low, there is no time to lose. To love doing this baggage work. I don’t know, it’s always
a great satisfaction to see. I’m imagining
that the oysters will feel good about themselves. They will be able to develop. About ten kilometers from the shore,
Tiphaine and Jean-Noël, oyster farmers, are loyal to the ria. Oyster farming has always developed
in bays, estuaries and rias. Originally, it was not for nothing. This is because it’s where you have the
greatest supply of food, the first link in the
food chain between land and sea. It’s called the Istrec channel here. Hichtre in Breton
means an oyster. The place here is called
the Pointe de l’Istrec. Opposite, the village is called Istrec. When the sea goes out and when the sea
comes in, we are in one of the places where there is the strongest current. And if there wasn’t this current,
there wouldn’t be so much plankton circulating,
we wouldn’t be able to do the breeding anyway. You see, if there was no current,
you see the mud there, it would never go away. After a while,
it would get too dirty. We would have to come with
motor pumps from the stop. And the current cleans that up, naturally. Jean-Noël has always lived
in the world of oysters. Not Tiphaine. We vary the tasks to avoid getting
bored or having too much back pain because repetition
can be quite tiring. My life before was more of
a daily routine that was always the same, a kind of routine. Here, no
two days are the same. It’s always different. It’s a journey. We don’t know what world we’re going into,
we don’t know where we’re going. Everything is random,
we don’t know if it will grow, we don’t know if it will
snap, we don’t know anything. So, we can just say… We condition the oysters
so that they are as good as possible. But then there is everything that was
outside, so we don’t control it. When she talks about the outside,
Tiphaine is probably thinking of the entrance to the Ria,
this inlet that we call here the bar, the famous Étel bar,
where thousands of cubic meters of salt water pass through the sandstone of the marshes,
without which the oysters would not grow so well. Every day,
for decades, Pierre Guéguin has crossed the bar
in both directions to raise his nets further out to sea. The concern here for sailors
is not to get trapped by the waves. The most dangerous thing
is to go back in once you’ve gone out, because with the swell,
when the swell takes you from behind, you are no longer maneuverable. And there we fall. There, we just passed it. The mystery of the Telles bar
is this enormous sandbank which moves at will
and makes entering and exiting the Ria uncertain and risky. From 7 meters, we fall to 3.20 meters. Yes, we go up to 3.20 meters. 2.80 meters. Look at the past. We can see that it is higher. The sea, you can practically see the bottom. With such changing depths,
unpredictable waves can form.
Go ahead. A natural phenomenon that does
not prohibit sailing for pleasure. Watch out, here we go. On sunny days,
Olivier and Maëlle like to go out with their 8-meter sailboat
in these turbulent waters. So. A way to sharpen
their sailing skills. This one, maybe. There, it’s good.
Shock, shock, shock. The two experienced men regularly come here to practice maneuvering
in specific conditions. Look, if we don’t go
too far, though. And then we go back to the river side. Where you have to know how to play with many
elements at once: the wind, the currents, the tide.
Here, this one. This is the top of the wave, this is the… Picking up speed all of a sudden
is a good feeling. By making several round trips,
we don’t take too many risks and we don’t get caught in the sandstorm. And above all, at the bottom, in the trough
of the wave, there is often no water. There is sand. So there, that’s where we come
with a big sailboat on its heels. There may be
breakage there, even capsized. Shall we turn around?
We’re going to turn. 3, 2, 1. It’s turning. This afternoon,
Olivier and Maëlle quickly realize that the sea conditions are changing. The wind is
strengthening and turning. We must try to return to the land. That’s the biggest problem. We’re going to go back to the middle of the river,
because otherwise we’ll end up on the beach and that’s not good. The waves are getting bigger. There’s one coming right here. And it starts to make the course hazardous. You should also avoid staying in the middle
of the bar and the dangerous sandbank. We’ll have to turn around because
otherwise we’ll get too close to the yard. You tell me, Maëlle, is that good? Quick, quick, quick. Come on, let’s go, let’s go. We touched. We touched the edge of the block. Fuck, this is not right. We’re going to have to bread some. Here we go.
I can’t do anything, I’m all in. There, that’s the ball. I can’t . There, we give up. We give up. It’s good.
Come on, let’s get out of here. On the ground, we call it
going off the road. There weren’t 36 solutions. Without panicking, they beached
the boat on the sand. Result: a torn sail. And above all, enough to fuel
the site’s sulphurous reputation. Another dirty trick from the Etel bar
that is still the talk of the town. Not a winter,
not a spring, not a season, without a pleasure boat
returning there, causing great fear to the occupants. As for Olivier and Maëlle’s sailboat,
it was later refloated by the SNSM rescue boat. Others have experienced more
dramatic outcomes, starting with the volunteer sailors who
set off in the 1960s to rescue the navigator Alain Bombard
and his team trapped at the helm during a test
of pneumatic canals. Result: nearly ten dead. Pierre is part of the generation
that experienced the tragedy of such people. I was 16 at the time. It was an event. We came to see the Bombard tests. We witnessed the sabotage. And then, to the sabirage,
until our internship. He took too many risks. He thought his boat would hold up,
but there was a big problem with it. But what there is,
it allowed, by the trick, to save quite a few people with the lifeboat. Yes. Yes, because before, on the ships,
there were only whaleboats. So it either broke or it leaked. But it was still a big
step forward in terms of security. Pierre has been through this
hundreds of times. He also made workers. He remained extremely cautious about it. It is
the power of the swell and the offshore wind against the power
of the river current. And there, that regulates. If you have long-term storms
from the west, the wind will automatically return to the river. What happened this winter. When the Atlantic is raging, the
Etelle bar is closed to navigation. Since the sinking of Alain Bombard,
there has been a civilian semaphore at the entrance to the RIA indicating where
the sandbank is and where boats can possibly pass through. In the winter of 2014,
with a series of storms that hit Brittany for weeks,
the bar was closed. Even at the bottom of the rioffe, a rare phenomenon,
the sea no longer went down, as if there had been no more tide. But everything is back to normal. The oyster bags have
reappeared again. Tiphaine and Jean Noël
have returned to work. The bone-farmers of the Riade des Tels
have found their marks, their habits in this territory
where sea and river merge. Yes, it’s the sea. It’s the sea. The paradox is that we don’t really know
at the administrative level how it’s planned, because in fact, you don’t have
a nautical chart from Pont Leroy. Upstream from Pont Leroy,
there is no nautical chart. So, what do we depend on? River regulations
or maritime regulations? But it’s just salt water. Sea, river. After all, what does it matter? In fine weather, the Ria is transformed. We would forget the torments of the bar and
the hardships of the oyster farmer’s job. An attraction symbolized
by this caretaker’s house. A tiny islet facing
the village of Saint-Cadeau. Problem: how to make
these two worlds coexist? Visitors and professionals. Are you in a park, madam? It is often a sign of times
of economic difficulty. When there are economic difficulties,
more and more people come to the coast to fish because it means a few
extra meals, including during the summer, for people who come on vacation. In economically complicated years,
there are more shore fishermen. They have never met
so many new faces. We need tourists. That… We, on the contrary, are happy
when there are people in the summer. One might wonder if the
weather people said that the weather was always nice in Brittany. Yes, people, they will have
a choice to ask them. On their initiative,
the oyster farmers of the Ria des Tels have collectively chosen
to mark out the channels. Dozens and dozens of
green and red pipes to help novices find their way through this maze. We know our parks very well,
that’s not the problem. The problem is
tourists who get lost. We didn’t worry much about the channel
because we knew where to go. But Raphic has evolved so much
that now we have to mark it out properly because,
one, people don’t know. This needs to be clear. Because there are a lot of people
who don’t know the point. So, the guy who rents a boat,
who goes up the river, he has to find his way around quite easily. This feeling of tranquility,
this particular alchemy, this charm specific to the ria,
makes people become attached to it. Jean-Noël continues to rediscover his
ria thanks to Tiphaine, via a blog on the Internet,
she makes the profession and its environment known. She takes another look at this world
that Jean-Noël has been exploring for almost 50 years. I’ve always lived here,
I’ve always wanted to do this job and I’ve always heard a discourse
linked to the profession, very professional and very technical. And Tiphaine comes with a
completely new perspective that makes me see many things from
a completely different angle. There are many things
that are new, that remain new. Even if we repeat the same gesture or the same
thing every day, there is always, always, always an element that is added
that makes us want to say it, to pass it on. These are photos… I would never have thought that
naturally. It looks like a drawing, a printing press. It is still an
exceptional workplace that continues to influence us, both through its
beauty and its richness. Other secrets are reserved for those
who put their heads underwater. A long time. They come from everywhere,
especially in spring, when
nature changes its face and color both underwater and on land. We are 500 meters from the mouth. It’s for the pleasure of watching
the evolution of life underwater. Since we’ve been coming here for a long time
, we know the site well and the species there. It is the participation
of amateurs in science. Another face of the haria is
now revealed a few meters below. Along the river
there are several diving sites for dozens of enthusiasts
and a variety of flora and fauna. Exceptional. All this variety,
if they manage to settle there, it really means that there are
good conditions for survival, for settlement and good conditions
for reproduction for the following generations. So obviously,
there is enough food for everyone. All of Raya, on a 50-meter site,
we will have It is a meadow of eelgrass, a rocky slope,
a pebble bottom. It’s very varied. On the Cake, the Seahorse. At the very end of a final stretch of sea, there is the commune of Le Coal Mindon,
known for its musical group, Son Bagade. On the bass drums,
as on the musicians’ T-shirts, there are seahorses,
the emblematic animal of Tudlaria. A sign of unity in this country where the sea
and the land also coexist in music. That’s why it’s called
Ronset Mour’s baggage. Roncet is horses and Mour is the sea. They put a seahorse because
Ronset Mour is sea horses. But it was to clearly show
that coual, main-don, main-don, is the land, it is agriculture, etc. And L’Oquoil was more about the sea,
the oyster farmers, etc. It’s really a two-faced commune. Gilles Servat, poet, writer, singer, known for 40 years thanks to his hit. There it is, the white ermine,
long live the dying marrow. The white ermine.
His song has become a kind of anthem. Where are you going, comrades? But France is also a country of yippies. I think that’s great, actually. Neither peasant nor sailor. Gilles Servat settled at the end
of this ria a few years ago. It took root there and 600 in harmony. The river, when I arrived here,
was the Étel River, it wasn’t the ria. And in Breton, it’s Mourintel,
it’s the sea of Étel. Mourre is the sea. That’s why I like living
in Morbihan, because it’s the only department with a French name. Morbihan is the little sea. It’s the people who brought me here. The people, the people here
who brought me here. I met my wife,
but I had already come before and I do n’t know, it was the spirit of the people
here, of Ron’s hand. What I like
are people who don’t show off. So. I think they’re not showing off here. With her eternal basket surfing
on the mud, we find Guena, the heavy foot collector. I preferred two hours there
to two hours working on a production line or in an office. In the land of vast marshes,
changing skies and people who don’t show off, the riade and she
doesn’t ask for much. Just keep it low key. A little corner of southern Brittany,
in the shadow of the prestigious neighboring gulf where there is no bar
to cross when you come by boat.
Sous les vents de l’Atlantique, un monde à part respire encore au rythme des flots. La Ria d’Étel, un paradis discret entre terre, mer et mémoire. ✋ Pour découvrir plus de documentaires voyages 👉 http://bit.ly/4mHkEDB Abonnez-vous 🙏
00:00 – Gena, pêcheuse de palourdes
01:59 – Une mer qui remonte sur la terre
03:12 – Tiffen et Jean-Noël, ostréiculteurs bretons
05:07 – La Barre d’Étel, passage redouté
09:25 – Naufrage et courage en mer
10:20 – Les drames d’Étel et la mémoire des marins
12:00 – L’hiver breton et les tempêtes de l’Atlantique
13:40 – Vivre ensemble : pêcheurs, touristes, traditions
16:10 – Sous la surface : vie marine et herbiers
19:25 – L’hippocampe, emblème de la Ria
20:20 – Locoal-Mendon et l’esprit breton
21:55 – Gena, le retour à la mer
23:00 – La Ria d’Étel, joyau caché du littoral
Au sud de la Bretagne entre Lorient et Vannes, dans l’ombre du Golfe voisin – le Golfe du Morbihan, la ria d’Etel s’étire sur une vingtaine de kilomètres de la côte jusque dans la campagne morbihannaise. Tantôt constellée d’îlots, de criques, de forêts et de champs cultivés, tantôt si proche du large, la Ria d’Etel est à multiples facettes : c’est la campagne à la mer ou la mer à la campagne…
À découvrir sur Terra Nauta :
De Bréhat à Ouessant : Trésors de la côte bretonne https://youtu.be/N2U0mpvileE
Du Mont-Saint-Michel à Saint-Malo : joyaux côtiers de France https://youtu.be/a_tXEa0KZjo
De Dunkerque à Deauville : Survol d’un littoral d’exception https://youtu.be/l56jXFPdkTY
RIA D’ETEL
Réalisé par : Yannick Charles
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#RiadEtel #Bretagne #Documentaire #Nature #Mer #France #Voyage #Océan #Littoral
1 Comment
Excellent reportage 👌 ! Merci Braz ! 👍