STOP THE DAM
Kings Beach – Let the salt be 🌊
News - 27/10/2026
How sea salt is made (someone from the group went to France)
One of our members was in France in September visiting her sister and went to see the salt pans at Guérande, so we thought she could write something for the website.
It's in Brittany, about an hour from Nantes, and you can do a little tour for a few euros which I would recommend if you are ever there. The man told us they have been doing it the same way for more than a thousand years. The sea comes in on the big tides through a little gate and they move it through a whole series of shallow clay ponds, each one a bit saltier than the last, and the sun and the wind take the water away until the salt starts to form, and then someone comes along with a very long wooden rake. It takes weeks of good weather and it was raining when we went, so we didn't see much raking.
The fine stuff that forms on top of the water on a still warm day is the fleur de sel, it means flower of salt, and they skim that off by hand. I told the man about our situation at Kings and I don't think he really followed because my French isn't very good, but he did say they have never needed a wall, or I think that's what he said. I bought a bag, it's in my cupboard if anyone wants to compare it to Kings.
From the group: thank you for this. We did look at whether something like this could work at Kings as we mentioned in our statement, and it probably can't, because Kings is a nature reserve and the water is a marine park sanctuary zone so you can't just go down and make salt or dig ponds, and you need big flat areas that hold water, and if you wanted to sell it at the markets there are food rules. Most of the salt in Australia comes from huge solar ponds in Western Australia, which is a bit different to a man with a rake. We still think it shows there are other ways of thinking about salt, and if anyone has experience with this please email us.