Another bad publicity for the bay of Saint-Brieuc! Having had to battle for many years with the scourge of green algae, this sector of the northern Breton coast is once again particularly impacted at the start of summer 2024.
In the town of Hillion, located at the bottom of the bay, the pollution threshold due to green algae has been exceeded in recent days. To the point that the Côtes d’Armor prefecture decided to prohibit, on June 22, access to the Saint-Guimond beach in Hillion. More precisely, it is the air pollution alert threshold which has been crossed, a consequence of the putrefaction of green algae washing up on the coast.
Map of the bay of Saint-Brieuc. Source: coqueliko.bzh
On Sunday, the prefecture’s services indicated that “the readings carried out by the Air Breizh association and communicated this morning reached 1.049 ppm on June 21, 2024 at 9:45 p.m.”. However, the alert threshold is set by the High Council of Public Health at 1 ppm (particles per million).
This accumulation of green algae has the effect of causing significant air pollution with hydrogen sulphide, a gas toxic to populations. The most severe symptoms of such poisoning include malaise, significant difficulty breathing and chest pain.
The Côtes d’Armor prefecture announced that it would monitor the situation closely in order to keep the public informed about this pollution in Hillion. As such, an alert monitoring update was published on Sunday June 23. For its part, the Hillion town hall issued an order prohibiting access to the beach on the afternoon of Saturday June 22.
This is not the first beach closure to which the municipality has had to resolve since between 2021 and 2022, the Hôtellerie beach had been closed for more than six months, as recalled by France 3 Bretagne.
In this year 2024, green algae made “an early return to the Côtes d’Armor”, noted the newspaper. The echoes on June 12. Between this date and the start of collections on May 15 on the beaches of Hillion, more than 40 tonnes of green algae were removed.
Finally, another “privilege” of the bay of Saint-Brieuc, “several flights over the coasts, carried out by the Center for the Study and Valorization of Algae (CEVA), made it possible to note that, as of May 8, 90% of the algae measured in Brittany were found” in the bay in question, added the press headline.
The particularly isolated location of the place combined with the absence of power largely explains this accumulation of algae in the Hillion sector.
Photo credit: DR (illustrative photo)
[cc] Breizh-info.com, 2024, dispatches free to copy and distribute subject to mention and link to the original source
