Kariat Arekmane

Kariat Arekmane is the urban centre of the municipality of Arekmane in the Cercle de Louta, Nador province.¹ The province belongs to the Oriental region.² The Ramsar information sheet for the Marchica lagoon names three larger places on its shore: Nador to the west, Beni Ansar to the north-west and, to the south-east, the village it spells Qaryat Arkmane.³ According to the Agence Marchica its Amazigh name is Larbaa Orekman.⁴

At the 2024 census the centre had 4,602 people in 1,307 households, the whole municipality 16,477.⁵ In 2014 the census had counted 5,387 inhabitants for the centre and 18,490 for the municipality.⁶ In Nador province 81.0 per cent of people speak Darija in everyday life and 71.1 per cent Tarifit.⁷

The lagoon covers 115 square kilometres and is separated from the Mediterranean by a 25-kilometre strip of coast.⁸ According to the Ramsar sheet it is 24 kilometres long, 7.5 kilometres wide and mostly two to four metres deep, eight at most; its salinity lies between 37 and 42.7 grams per litre.⁹ Since 15 January 2005 it has been on the list of the Ramsar Convention as Sebkha Bou Areg, with 14,000 hectares.¹⁰

The watercourses that flow into the lagoon include the Oued Arkmane and other oueds from the Kebdana mountains; most of them carry water only part of the time.¹¹ The catchment receives between 252 and 420 millimetres of rain a year, most of it between November and April; snow is practically unknown there.¹²

According to the sheet, some 200 boats fished on the lagoon from eight landing points, among them Qariate Arkmane; only Sidi Ali had been developed as a small harbour.¹³ The Société Marocaine d’Ostréiculture farmed gilthead sea bream, sea bass, Japanese prawns and two kinds of oyster.¹⁴ The sheet also records salt production and, on the irrigated plain of Bou Areg, intensive agriculture.¹⁵

The sheet describes the lagoon as a wintering area for migratory birds and as a spawning and feeding ground for fish.¹⁶ In 2002, 390 pairs of Kentish plover bred here, 1.2 per cent of the regional population; Audouin’s gull is also mentioned.¹⁷ The Ramsar entry lists water rail, little tern, pied avocet and slender-billed gull, among others, as breeding birds.¹⁸

The plain of Bou Areg is one of the landscapes around the lagoon.¹⁹ Under the plans described by the geographer Roland Paskoff in 1962, it was to receive water from the Moulouya through a ten-kilometre tunnel beneath the foothills of the Kebdana mountains, for 15,000 hectares of irrigated land.²⁰

Law No. 25-10 of 16 July 2010 created a dedicated development zone around the lagoon, in which the Agence Marchica performs the duties of Nador’s urban planning agency.²¹ For Kariat Arekmane its programme provides for the “Village des Pêcheurs”: a new harbour for both fishing and pleasure boats, and accommodation with 6,000 beds.²² The agency also lists the redevelopment of the three urban centres of Nador, Beni Ansar and Arekmane.²³ The land-use plan for the area was approved by a decree of 16 September 2026.²⁴