Tanguy likes to fish on the Côte Sauvage - literally, the "wild side" - of Belle-Île, where the ocean crashes into the land in a magnificent explosion of sea spray. Wearing only a neoprene scuba suit, he scrapes barnacles from rocks at the point where the unstoppable force meets the immovable object.
This wildness is at the heart of what Belle-Île offers its 5,000 residents and thousands of their countrymen who regularly flock here to be soothed by its power. This is where, guided by nature, they come to grieve or heal, to be alone or fall in love.
Half hopping, half waddling between the rocks, Tanguy brings me down to take some photos of the barnacles on a "calm" day off. The water is a turquoise froth that rushes in from several angles at once. Apart from some hearty mussels, the barnacles are the only things that can hang onto the rocks in this thrashing surge. "A couple people died right here a couple years back," says Tanguy, whose wizened face resembles Gene Hackman's.
In the 35 years he has been doing this, "three or four" licensed fishermen (out of a group of only 47) have lost their lives. Tanguy has had three accidents in the last two years, including one that ripped a hole in his calf muscle and left him dangling upside down from a cliff with his foot pinned in the rocks.
Despite the danger, he couldn't imagine doing anything else. "We're in nature," he says, gesturing around him. "Doing this, we feel free. Everything is beautiful."
Along the Côte Sauvage and all around Belle-Île, there are no Jet Skis buzzing the beaches, no boardwalk to see and be seen on. This is not the place to come for a wild weekend with the gang.
"This is the anti-Saint Tropez," says Serge Albagnac, who has been preserving and promoting Belle-Île for 50 years.
"I came for a girl when I was 18, but by the time I moved here, we were done," he says, smiling at a far-off memory. Now, he's the president of the island's tourism bureau, conscious of the mix of locals, tourists, and nature needed to keep Belle-Île thriving.
