Chapter 01
Into the Abyss: composure before performance.
I have been scuba-diving for longer than I can remember now. My first dive was in the Bassin d'Arcachon where I explored the Gallouneys bunkers.
They are a chain of bunkers installed by Nazi Germany during WW2 as part of the Atlantic Wall plan. Now they are 20m below the surface and make for an amazing diving spot. That day I discovered a new world, both breathtaking and wild, but also fragile.
During those years I have been following my scuba-diving instructor, Olivier Linardon, through a series of ecological preservation actions for the local marine ecosystem, ranging from underwater cleanup operations to more recent marine biology works on fauna study and preservation. I am now a licensed autonomous diver and have clocked in a small bunch of deep sea dives on top of all the different technical operation dives I was able to take part in.
Chapter 02
Underwater Cleanup Ops: club work, cleanup dives, and marine biology.
The NSA (Nettoyeurs Sub-aquatiques du bassin d'Arcachon), my scuba-diving club, has been organizing underwater cleanup operations since the club was founded in 2020.
The idea is very simple: we gather scuba-diver teams to dive and pick up any waste laying on the seafloor. We have cleaned up beaches, harbors, popular diving spots or even under local piers with special authorizations. For example, in December 2023, the club organised the second edition of the NSA day. We gathered a little more than 200 divers and collected 116 Kg of waste on a popular beach here in Arcachon.
Some of my craziest finds were a bulldozer shovel, several boat anchors, a traffic barrier and a phone. I believe those actions are crucial for the message we are able to communicate. We make a statement that can be heard way beyond our little town and it is a way for us to raise awareness on the impact we all have on the environment and show to the world that we can go a long way if we all work together and if we are a little more considerate with mother nature.
More recently I have been involved in Marine biology projects. Since I have both my boating license and scuba-diving first-aid certificate (RIFAP), I was able to take divers out and manage the security of diving teams from the boat. So I took part both under and over the water in underwater seabed cartography operations where we were tasked with outlining the limits of seagrass patches that couldn't be clocked in by plane radar technology since the patches were too deep.
Chapter 03
The Hippo Project: execution, devotion, skill.
My favorite project is by far the Projet hippocampes. We have been working in partnership with Arcachon's harbor to install three underwater seahorse hotels, the goal being marine preservation and study of an endangered local species.
The hotels are structures created out of concrete, oyster shell bags and recycled plastic strands. The way they are put together mimics the local underwater environments with bigger openings at the bottom of the structure (we have a lot of rocky cliffs around piers) and smaller openings as you climb up the structure to allow other types of fish to benefit from the hotel. The species identification and logging is entirely done by the younger folks of the club, it is a way to teach them about our ecosystem and also show them how to conduct professional and rigorous scientific work.
Being a little older I usually go down first to make sure it's safe for them and install a guiding thread so they don't get lost in the mud. About a month after the install of the first hotel when I was doing that safety setup I went around the structure with my friend and I stumbled upon Cleopatra, our first seahorse female resident! We have installed a second structure next to the first one to hopefully make more room for the seahorses.