Translator: Eve schneegans Reviewer: Denise RQ
I don't know if anyone has told you this,
but you look great in blue.
You already look like the sea.
On this subject, I have to confess something,
"I love the ocean, and as far back as I can remember,
I have heard the sound of the sea mingled with the rustling of the Filao trees."
That first sentence of the wonderful novel by Jean-Marie Le Clézio, "The Prospector",
I have made it my own, because it symbolizes so much and so well,
my own childhood memories.
Like its author, I also have had the happiness and joy
of living a childhood washed in the rhythm of the Indian Ocean,
in the rhythm of its lagoons, in its tangy smells,
in the rhythm of the rustling trade wind in the needles of the Filao trees
in the rhythm of the beaches, along which I played for many hours.
At that time, I lived with my parents
on the Saint-Denis heights on Réunion Island.
Our house dominated the Indian Ocean.
Its blue immensity disappeared into the sky.
It was there before me, every day, as far as the eye could see,
and the sight of it, naturally, has been etched into my memory.
It was there that it all started.
That was the golden age of truancy, of games in the pineapple fields,
of imaginary adventures.
Among them, Captain Nemo's were, of course, distinctly my favorites.
Like the heroes of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea",
I dreamed that I traveled under the sea.
I had turned my bed into a submarine, and I acted out epic descents there.
Nevertheless, that golden age unfortunately came to an end.
I had to return to France with my parents.
Goodbye lagoons, goodbye Filaos!
I had to learn to wear shoes, to wear sweaters,
and especially, I had to learn not to see the sea anymore.
You can imagine the trauma for a child.
Fortunately, I was saved from despair by a surprising ally: television.
And not just any television, but color television,
which, as if by magic, was awakening at the same time
to the magic of the undersea world, through the intervention of one Cousteau.
Cousteau reawakened that ocean that was slumbering in me.
At that time, I only lived to the rhythm of the Calypso’s adventures,
to the rhythm of those men with red caps,
of those divers in black suits with a yellow stripe.
With them, I dove in pursuit of whales, in pursuit of dolphins and manta rays...
I had again turned my bed into an undersea house.
I wanted to live under the sea.
If I'm telling you all the episodes of my childhood,
it is naturally because they guided--
They guided me towards my life as an adult man.
Step by step, I learned to dive.
To be like my heroes,
I took up oceanographic studies, marine biology.
From a setting of adventure and passion,
the ocean became my subject of study my subject of research.
Diving became a tool
for understanding and decoding the signs of the undersea world.
I began to roam the planet, studying Mediterranean algae,
the large kelp of the Kerguelen Islands, the fish of the Antarctic.
I even studied crabs in Jamaica, just to give you an idea.
For all that, little by little, I felt that the desire
to transmit, to report, to bear witness,
became greater than the desire to seek.
And one day, I traded in my microscope for a camera.
I abandoned scientific publications for mainstream magazines.
In short, I became an underwater photographer
and a journalist, in the diving world.
And then I wandered the planet, back and forth, to testify
of the undersea world's infinite beauty
wetting my flippers in almost all the seas and oceans of the world.
And one day, this wonderful profession
finally allowed me to meet my hero, Commander Cousteau,
and to go aboard the Calypso-- magical moments!
And although I didn't work with Cousteau,
he had a major, leading influence on me.
Like a good number of young people of that time, imbibing on the blue screen
the adventures of the Calypso, the Cousteau generation,
I had my conscience awakened
to the natural balances and the ecology of the undersea world.
And so it was no longer enough to say how beautiful the ocean and the sea were.
From that point on, I had to say how fragile it was down there,
and how great was our responsibility to protect that marvelous universe,
that universe that was so important.
In the end, one lone image sums up all that:
the image of our ocean-planet.
Let us not forget that it was the astronauts
who allowed us to change our vision of our planet.
Seen for the first time from space, our world was really perfect,
and it was blue.
That tells us the importance of the world.
Some numbers, to convince you or to remind you.
The ocean covers 71% of the globe.
It represents 80% of the volume of the earth's crust.
97% of all the water reserves of our aquatic planet,
the only one known in the universe.
The ocean feeds us: 60% of the proteins that we consume every day
comes from marine products.
It provides our oxygen: 64% of the oxygen we breathe
is produced by phytoplankton.
It regulates our climate it is particularly
thanks to the Gulf Stream - the well-known Gulf Stream -
that we have, at our latitudes, fairly mild winters.
And it sustains our economies: more than 90% of economic exchanges
throughout the world are made today via oceangoing transportation.
This tells you the importance of this universe, which, however,
is damaged by man, weakened, traumatized.
I won't list all the ways for you here.
I think you have enough traumatic images in your memories for that.
So what do we need to do?
We can't place the ocean in a bubble.
We can't place the planet in a bubble; that makes no sense.
No, we have to continue to warn people, to make them aware, to educate them
to understand this ocean, which remains mysterious in many ways.
This way, we must continue the work Jules Verne begun and Cousteau extended.
I'm in the habit of saying that each era has a great visionary,
a symbolic vessel,
and a great adventure under the sea, which has enabled
this anchoring of the marine setting in the collective mindset.
We had the Nautilus, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea".
We had the Calypso and the Cousteau adventure.
Today, one man is ready to take up the torch,
a true heir of Jules Verne and Cousteau.
That man is Jacques Rougerie.
He is an architect, passionate about the marine world,
who, for more than 30 years, has done research allowing us
to observe the undersea world better,
to allow us to be more engaged, to make us live in the sea.
I'm fortunate enough to work with him today on what will be
the greatest underwater adventure of the beginning of the 21st century.
His vessel is called the "Sea Orbiter".
I am happy to present it to you tonight.
So what is the "Sea Orbiter"?
First, it is a new look at the ocean, a new way of exploring this magical ocean.
It is a vertical vessel 58 meters tall, which has the peculiarity
of having a 21m section above,
a 37 meter section below the water's surface,
a vessel which is going to drift into the heart of the oceans.
For the first time in the world, a crew of 18 people will be able to live
24 hours a day, and for a long period, beneath the sea,
to allow us better to mature our understanding of the marine ecosystem.
Thanks to its multi-disciplinary platform, it can accommodate a wide variety
of explorers and researchers, who will be able, day and night,
to observe the inexhaustible riches of the marine environment,
and of the undersea world, especially thanks to the easy access
to the undersea world, precisely in order to fit better into this unique universe,
to exist in symbiosis with the sub-aquatic universe.
All these qualities make the Sea Orbiter the first nomadic underwater house,
surrounded by the greatest of gardens, the ocean.
So how did the "Sea Orbiter" come to be?
From our need always to raise awareness, to continue to root the marine world
in the minds of our children, so that they understand the stakes tomorrow.
From our need to understand how this ocean works,
how the very complex mechanisms that take place there function.
At the bottom of the oceans, especially, there are unexplored treasures.
The Sea Orbiter is going to open a new field of observation and exploration
to discover new species, new molecules,
to better understand the planetary equilibrium,
which occur especially between the atmosphere and the ocean,
so particularly important today, in the context of global warming.
Again, the ocean regulates our planet's climate, but
it's also important for discovering solutions for the future.
The scientists agree in telling us:
"At the bottom of the oceans there are treasures that will be resources
for all humanity's well-being."
In the field of nutrition, to alleviate the deficiency of fishing resources,
which are in decline, one day we'll find new molecules that will allow us
to make new proteins, or to develop a more reasonable aquaculture.
In the field, of health, of pharmacology,
the ocean is a wonderful breeding ground of genetic material,
which inherently renews itself at the great depths every 3 days:
can you imagine such riches?
Where someday, we'll be able to research new medicines,
new medical procedures.
In the field of mineral resources, the rare earth elements
that are so essential for your "smartphones", our tablets,
exist right now in prevailing quantities at the bottom of the ocean.
In the field of energy, there are renewable energies from the ocean:
the energy of waves and currents, the thermic energy of the seas,
the temperature differential between the bottom and the surface.
All these ocean resources remain largely unexplored today.
But rest assured, they determine they future of humanity.
We're not just living through an economic crisis
- I want you to be convinced - but truly we're living
through an ecological crisis, whose two main foundations are:
population increase and natural resources rarefaction.
The solution is partly in the heart of our oceans
on condition, of course, that we know how to use them responsibly,
which we have failed to do on the land.
For our children, for your children,
we must change how we look at the world.
We must place the ocean at the heart of our daily concerns.
We cannot continue to speak of "sustainable development",
of "planetary durability",
without including the ocean at the heart of the equation.
Be sure about that.
Thereby, we also have to invent a new socio-economic model
which includes the ocean in a sustainable and responsible manner,
as an asset for research, for knowledge,
but also for solutions, innovations, and progress.
Some people call this the "Blue Society".
But whatever we want to call it, it is an inescapable model
which will allow us to guide the planet towards a desirable future.
This is about a real paradigm shift, a shift to the ocean colors.
And if we wish to succeed in this unlikely gamble
for our future, and that of our children, and make the ocean live in men's hearts,
we must make men live in the heart of the ocean.
Therefore, I invite you all aboard the Sea Orbiter, from tomorrow.
Thank you.
(Applause)