One has a first name which means “sea”, the other has irises which recall its color. Together, Marine and Nathalie Bougio founded Aux filles des marées, a family oyster business in Sarzeau in 2016. They have produced 30 to 40 tonnes of oysters each year. “We collect them when they are six months old, and we raise them until they arrive on the plates,” explains Marine. A fascinating career that neither of them imagined embracing.
Oysters for love
Nathalie at fifteen when her older sister married Marine’s father’s brother (a family affair, you have been warned). It is 1986 and Marine was born two years later. “At the time, I was his nanny,” recalls Nathalie. Without knowing that less than ten years later, she would become his stepmother. “But Marine is 99% my daughter,” proclaims the almost fifty-something.
Alongside Michel, Marine’s father, Nathalie discovers the oyster culture. “When I married her in 1994, it was the beginning of oysters. And since then, I have never left them again, ”smiles the Breton. The sea, she spends her days there, eight months of the year. The toughest. “When I started working there at the age of 15, I really didn’t think I would make it my job,” she laughs. But when her husband died in 2015, she decided to continue. “Out of love for him, for Marine, but also for me,” she slips.
Seasickness
Marine was then 27 years old. Oysters and the sea, she knows only that, or almost. “I grew up facing the gulf. Kid, I had fun fishing for clams, I spent my time wading in the water, ”she recalls. In his paternal family, as maternal, oyster farming is passed down from generation to generation. La Sarzeautine slips: “The legend says that at one year, I ate a dozen oysters”.
Until you reach an overdose. “I wanted to do everything for a job, except that! », Continues the one who begins a Bac L, with the hope of becoming a journalist. “Too reserved”, she ends up orienting herself in the social sector and leaves for Nantes for her studies. But the student is seasick. “I had to come home every weekend. When I arrived here, as soon as I breathed in the iodine, everything was better, ”she smiles.
“Completely freaked out”
Until returning definitively to the source. In 2014, she announced that she wanted to take over from the father. But the latter died a few months later. Nathalie and Marine decide to join forces. “Even though we were completely freaked out at the idea of taking over the operation, we didn’t ask ourselves any questions. It was obvious, ”asks the eldest of the duo.
A choice they do not seem to regret, almost six years later. And this, in spite of the frozen hands a good part of the year, the damages, and the worries. Despite a sea as beautiful as it can be brutal. A bit of a philosopher, Nathalie concludes: “The sea, we can always try to tame it, but we know that in the end, she is the master all the time, and we, the student”.
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