Salt-water Marshes

The salt-water marshes (the term “marshes salt-water” is always in the plural) or saltworks are a whole of basins low depth, called squares, in which the salt, obtained by evaporation of the Sea water is collected, under the combined action of the Sun and the Vent.

They constitute a farm of the type, whose activity names Saliculture . The people who collect the salt of the salt-water marshes are called Paludier S, Saliculteur S, or Saunier S. Those which transport it to sell it are also called Saunier S.

Principle

Except some exceptions, the saltworks are littoral and function with sea water. The Sea water is led by gravity at the time of the average and strong tides (coefficient higher than 80) through a great canal system (the étier S) to tanks or waiting tanks, called mudholes , cobiers , fares and adernes . From there, it is then led in the basins of harvest, the crystallizers or eyelets . In hot season, throughout this course, salinity increases regularly front even the entry of water in the crystallizers.

In the mudholes, deep several tens of centimetres, the suspended matter settle by Décantation, forming a layer of several centimetres, cleaned per annum during the winter season. In addition to being a mud tank, the mudhole can sometimes be used as water reserve during maintenance and harvest (period from February to October).

The cobier, less deep (a few centimetres), ensures a secondary decantation and allows to start the process of evaporation itself.

The fares are rectangular water parts and allow a big raise of the degree of salinity of water.

Lastly, the adernes have two functions: to continue evaporation while storing water necessary to the filling of the eyelets (they make it possible to restock, out of salt water strongly charged, the eyelets after one day of evaporation).

From there, finer channels, the salt makers , feed out of salt water strongly charged with the surfaces of Cristallisation or crystallizers, frequently called eyelets or extracting the salt from surface . In these small rectangular basins generally, the weak layer of water (lower than the centimetre, about 5 mm in general) is favorable to its warming and thus to its evaporation until precipitation of salt. The edges of the eyelet are generally hollower (soft inclined on the first 50 centimetres of the edge) to recover a maximum of salt flower because otherwise there is not a thickness of water sufficient for harvest.

In the crystallizers, salt is collected in the form of relatively large crystals precipitating at the bottom of the thin layer of saturated water. The paludier can also gather flower of salt made up of smaller crystals remainder with water flower if the conditions are favorable (presence of wind).

The production itself only takes place mid-June with mid-September in the Northern hemisphere; the remainder of the year being devoted to the maintenance of the saltworks or its safeguarding of the bad weather by immersion by the sea.

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