Concarneau tide times

Concarneau is a working fishing port and walled mediaeval city in south Finistère, built around a shallow bay on Brittany's Atlantic coast. The town's defining feature is the Ville Close — a fortified island connected to the mainland by two drawbridges, its stone ramparts rising from the tidal water directly. 2 metres, the water around the Ville Close changes dramatically across the tidal cycle: at low water, the stone foundations are exposed and the channel between the island and the quays is shallow enough in places to wade.

At high water the same walls appear to rise straight from the sea. The visual effect of the tidal range on this mediaeval townscape is one of the most striking on the Breton coast. Concarneau is France's largest tuna landing port by volume, with the Albacore fleet that works the Bay of Biscay returning to unload at the industrial fishing quays across the bay from the Ville Close.

The town's fishing identity is tangible: the quayside fish market, the net sheds, and the smell of the working harbour are not tourist theatre. The Musée de la Pêche in the Ville Close documents the history of the sardine industry, which once supported dozens of canning factories here before the sardine fishery collapsed in the early 20th century. Today the industrial fleet targets tuna, langoustine, and scallops, while smaller inshore boats work the reefs of the Baie de Concarneau on each tidal cycle.

The bay itself is productive for diving and snorkelling. Rocky reefs extend outward from both sides of the bay mouth, and the water clarity — aided by the strong tidal flushing of the 4-metre spring cycle — is significantly better than in more enclosed Breton estuaries. Shore diving from the beaches south of the Ville Close at low water exposes reef ridges colonised by kelp, wrasse, and the occasional cuttlefish.

Sea kayakers use the bay as a staging point for the Îles de Glénan, an atoll-like archipelago of nine small islands 20 kilometres to the south. The Glénan are remarkable for a temperate latitude: white sand beaches, turquoise water, and a lagoon shallow enough to snorkel across in fine weather. The islands are accessible by ferry from Concarneau from April to October, but the tidal channels between the Glénan islands carry meaningful currents — up to 3 to 4 knots on spring tides — and kayakers or divers planning to move between islands need to time the crossing against the tidal stream.

The ferry lands at Île Saint-Nicolas, the largest of the group. Fishing from the shore and the rocky platforms outside the bay targets bass, pollack, and sea bream. The most productive windows are the first two hours of flood over the shallow reef ground, when prey fish are pushed onto the rocks by the incoming water and predators follow.

Rowing regattas are organised in the Baie de Concarneau each summer; the bay's shelter from SW swell, combined with the clean tidal flushing that keeps the water clear, makes it a reliable venue for on-water events. The Festival des Filets Bleus, a major Breton folk and fishing festival, takes place each August. The intertidal zone around the bay mouth provides productive ground for shore anglers on spring tides — the retreating water exposes kelp-covered rock and tidal pools along both headlands flanking the bay entrance, accessible for roughly 2 hours either side of the lowest spring low waters.

Mullet work the inner harbour basin at all tidal states, following the ebb and flood currents around the Ville Close island. The tidal cycle at Concarneau also drives the rhythm of the working fleet: inshore vessels time departure and return around harbour depth over the shallow-water bar at the inner quay entrance, which restricts access for deeper-keeled vessels in the lower portion of the tidal range. 5 metres in range — large enough that skippers of fishing and charter vessels plan their week with one eye on the tidal stage.

Predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine, a gridded global ocean model. 3 metres on height — model-derived, not from a local gauge. fr.