BOAT-COMPARATOR Guide
Sormiou, Morgiou, Cassis bay: the mandatory mooring buoys in the Calanques
Free anchoring is receding in the Calanques National Park: mandatory eco-friendly buoys, the official "Mes Calanques" app, which sites are affected, and what it means for a rental boat.
Dropping anchor wherever you like at Sormiou or Morgiou is increasingly a thing of the past. In the Calanques National Park, free anchoring is gradually giving way to eco-friendly mooring buoys, backed by an official app to find your way. Here is what that actually changes for a rental boat this summer.
Why the change
The busiest waters in the Calanques are carpeted with posidonia seagrass meadows, a marine plant that grows just a few centimetres a year and that a single badly dropped anchor can tear out for decades. A study published in 2022 in the Journal of Sea Research documented, at Sant'Amanza in Corsica, the loss of 7.5 hectares of posidonia meadow in a single year under the pressure of recreational anchoring (Pergent-Martini, Monnier, Lehmann, Barralon & Pergent, Major regression of Posidonia oceanica meadows in relation with recreational boat anchoring: A case study from Sant'Amanza bay, 2022, see the study on Google Scholar). Findings like this one, documented both in Corsica and around Marseille, are what pushed the National Park and the City to fit the most damaged sites with buoys connected to eco-friendly anchors rather than let every boat drop its own anchor onto the seagrass.
The sites affected
Seven sites were fitted as a priority: the Sormiou calanque, the Pierres Tombées sector at Morgiou, Cassis bay, the western side of Pomègues at the Frioul islands, Marseilleveyre, and the Île Verte and bay of La Ciotat. In these waters, anchoring directly on the seagrass is banned and only a free buoy allows mooring; at both Sormiou and Morgiou, anchoring is also barred within 300 metres of the shore, the same limit covered in our 300-metre band guide.
The "Mes Calanques" app
Free to download before you set off, the Mes Calanques app shows in real time which mooring zones are authorised, which buoys are free, and the day's access conditions — a habit worth building in the day before departure rather than once offshore, when signal gets patchy. Our guide on staying reachable at sea covers exactly where signal still holds near the Park's coastline.
What it means for a rental boat
In practice, a RIB or a license-free boat rented for the day out of Cassis or Marseille now has to reckon with limited buoy availability at the height of summer: aim for an early-morning arrival, before 10 am, or have a backup plan — a quieter neighbouring cove if Sormiou is full. Anchoring on the seagrass remains a punishable offence, exactly as covered in our guide to posidonia anchoring rules in the Mediterranean, which applies along the whole Mediterranean coast, not just the Calanques.
The right move before booking
- Check the Mes Calanques app the day before to see expected crowding at your target site.
- Have a backup calanque ready in case the Sormiou or Morgiou buoys are all taken on arrival.
- Never anchor on the seagrass as a stopgap: the next free buoy or a neighbouring site is the only legal option.
Boat-Comparator queries Boataround, SamBoat and Click&Boat live to compare the boats available around Cassis and Marseille, with the right departure times to enjoy the Calanques without running into fully booked buoys at midday.
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