Monday, April 25, 2022
Since its origin, in January 2011, the philanthropic association of general interest OceanoScientific primarily targets young people in CE2-CM1-CM2 classes with the aim of making them RESPECT and LOVE the Ocean. To this end, Carla Di Santo, Scientific Coordinator & Diving Manager of theOceanoScientific Expeditions, assisted The Sea Workshop on Wednesday April 13 to take a group of twenty-four girls and boys aged six to twelve on a snorkeling trip to raise their awareness of the marine environment and to discover the animals of the Mediterranean shallows in their natural habitat. These children are from one of the programs offered by Synergy Family, co-founded by Laurent Choukroun and Frank Tortel, which has offered for more than ten years the opportunity for all kinds of activities aimed at individual and collective development. This trip to sea, financed by"Marseille Capital of the Sea", registered in operation "A step towards the sea", resulting from the collaboration of four partners: Marseille Capitale de la Mer, Synergie Family, Le Cercle des Nageurs and the CMA CGM Foundation. Thus, children learn to swim and live edutainment experiences to understand, love and respect the sea. Let us remember on this occasion that "Marseille Capital of the Sea" brings together the living forces of the Marseille city, whether economic, cultural, industrial, craft, sporting, gastronomic, environmental, academic, social, or institutional, to enhance the sea as an urban resource. The association team OceanoScientific is therefore happy to support this initiative to raise awareness of the major role of the sea in our urban lives.
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Monday 7 September 2020
At the beginning of September, the celebrated Nice-born photographer Greg Lecoeur, named for the "2016 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year", produced a night-time photo report to enrich his databank of exceptional images of Mediterranean plankton for the "LOVE THE OCEAN®- Greg Lecoeur" exhibition organised on the quay of the Yacht Club de Monaco (YCM) from Thursday 15 to Thursday 29 October as part of OceanoScientific Mediterranean Contaminants Expedition 2020 which will be carried out by sail without any CO2 emissions or waste by the navigator-explorer Yvan Griboval, member of the YCM' Club des Explorateurs and President of the OceanoScientific associations.
Boarding from the pontoon of the Yacht Club de Monaco for a night-time photo report.
From left to right: David Luquet, scientific diver from the Institut de la Mer in Villefranche-sur-Mer and underwater cameraman; Greg Lecoeur, underwater photographer; Yvan Griboval, navigator-explorer, President of the OceanoScientific associations. Missing on the photo: Thomas Champion, the PROTECTOR pilot. Photo: OceanoScientific
The purpose of this unprecedented oceanographic campaign, placed under the scientific authority of the Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (Ifremer), a landmark partner of the OceanoScientific Programme since 2006, is to identify the nature and density of organic contaminants, especially those which are due to the degradation of plastic in the sea. The fact is that successful Mediterranean campaigns carried out by foundations such as 7e Continent, TARA Expeditions, One Ocean, etc., have demonstrated the high content of micro-plastics. The OceanoScientific Expedition therefore intends to complete this scientific research by identifying and assessing the nature of the poisons that impact the phytoplankton at the origin of the food chain.
However, the first organisms to be poisoned by phytoplankton gorged with organic contaminants are the tiny living beings that make up plankton. For this reason, thanks to the talent of Greg Lecoeur, internationally renowned for his technique of night-time underwater photography of the infinitely small, the OceanoScientific association is to produce an exhibition in the form of a wall of plankton, twenty meters long and two meters high, designed to make the greatest number aware - starting with children in CE2-CM1-CM2 classes - of the consequences of plastic pollution on life, given that these organic contaminants will end up on our plates at the other end of the food chain. Like plankton and its predators, our bodies are incapable of ridding themselves of the deadly poisons...
Monday 29 June 2020
OceanoScientific Monaco: Enhanced governance
On Thursday, 25 June, the first annual statutory General Assembly was held of the brand new philanthropic association and registered charity OceanoScientific de Monaco, founded on 14 May 2019. This meeting was held at the association's headquarters in the salons of the Yacht Club de Monaco. On this occasion two new Members were elected to the Board of Trustees which now consists of: Yvan Griboval, Founding President; Alberto Vitale, Founding Vice-President; Laurent Soler, Secretary General; Charlotte Bouery, Treasurer and Irina Peterson. Irina is an environmental activist engaged in fighting plastic pollution of the Ocean. She has just come back from a scientific assignment in the Pacific which once again made it possible to testify to the invasion of micro and nanoplastics in regions of the seas furthest from any inhabited land.
On the terrace of the Yacht Club de Monaco and in front of the Prince's Palace on Thursday 25 June, the new Board of Trustees of the OceanoScientific philanthropic association, from left to right: Alberto Vitale, Founding Member - Vice-President; Charlotte Bouery, Treasurer; Yvan Griboval, Founding Member - President; Irina Peterson, Member; Laurent Soler, Secretary General.
Photo OceanoScientific
The next OceanoScientific event in the news will be the OceanoScientific Mediterranean Contaminants Expedition 2020, organised from 15 to 29 October in close conjunction with the Environmental Laboratory Division of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency established in Monaco and with the Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (Ifremer), a long-standing partner of the OceanoScientific Programme.
This OceanoScientific Expedition scheduled to sail the Monaco - Marseille (France) - Barcelona (Spain) - Nador (Morocco) - Monaco route will therefore be an opportunity to enter the Marchica de Nador lagoon, now fully cleared by the will of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, May God Assist Him. This site has also become in a short time one of the largest bird sanctuaries on the Mediterranean coasts. This illustrates Nature's ability to reclaim its rights, as has been observed in many places during the lock-down further to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tuesday 21 April 2020
Ojective 15 October
The OceanoScientific Mediterranean Contaminants Expedition 2020, organized by the OceanoScientific philanthropic association and registered charity, in close conjunction with the Division of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Environment Laboratories of the United Nations established in Monaco and with the Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (Ifremer), a long-standing partner of the OceanoScientific Programme, was to leave the Principality on March 26. Health conditions permitting, a departure has been scheduled for Monday 8 June, at the same time and place, on the occasion of World Oceans Day, with a return to the Yacht Club de Monaco on Monday 22 June. Given the closure of the Schengen area, the inaccessibility of France as well as Spain and Morocco and without specifying the duration of the current arrangements, the departure of this OceanoScientific Expedition is now postponed to Thursday 15 October.
The OceanoScientific Expedition, whose route is scheduled to be Monaco - Marseille (France) - Barcelona (Spain) - Nador (Morocco) - Monaco, will highlight the activities of the four partner NGOs that are to be visited: the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, Pure Ocean in Marseille, the Fundación Ecomar in Barcelona and the Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection in Nador, whose lagoon has been entirely depolluted by Royal Will, and has quickly become one of the largest ornithological reserves on the Mediterranean coast.
Yvan Griboval, President of OceanoScientific, will skippe a new OceanoScientific Explorer - the formerly named CLUB MED maxi-catamaran - as part of an unprecedented scientific campaign in the Mediterranean (Monaco - France, Spain and Morocco) to study the nature and density of organic contaminants that poison phytoplankton, the basis of the marine food chain.
Photo Gary Papageorgiou
Monday 23 March 2020
OceanoScientific Mediterranean Contaminants Expedition 2020 postponed
At 11:30 on Thursday 26 March Sovereign Prince Albert II was to release the moorings of the OceanoScientific Explorer from the pontoon of honor of the Yacht Club de Monaco for an unprecedented two-week oceanographic campaign: the OceanoScientific Mediterranean Contaminants Expedition 2020, organized by the OceanoScientific philanthropic association and registered charity, in close conjunction with the Division of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Environment Laboratories of the United Nations established in Monaco and with the Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (Ifremer), a long-standing partner of the OceanoScientific Programme. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic the campaign has been postponed. Health conditions permitting, a departure has been scheduled for Monday 8 June, at the same time and place, on the occasion of World Oceans Day, with a return to the Yacht Club de Monaco on Monday 22 June. The decision will be taken on 15 May, either confirming the departure or postponing it further.
For the occasion, the formerly-named CLUB MED 33.50-meter maxi-catamaran, winner of THE RACE 2000 just twenty years ago, had been chartered to become for two weeks the new OceanoScientific Explorer with a crew in particular comprising two young scientists in charge of collecting samples in accordance with the directives of researchers from the IAEA and Ifremer.
The OceanoScientific Expedition, whose route was scheduled to be Monaco - Marseille (France) - Barcelona (Spain) - Nador (Morocco) - Monaco, highlights the activities of the four partner NGOs that are to be visited: the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, Pure Ocean in Marseille, the Fundación Ecomar in Barcelona and the Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection in Nador, whose lagoon has been entirely depolluted by Royal Will, and has quickly become one of the largest ornithological reserves on the Mediterranean coast.
Yvan Griboval, President of OceanoScientific, will skipper the formerly named CLUB MED maxi-catamaran - as part of an unprecedented scientific campaign in the Mediterranean to study the nature and density of organic contaminants that poison phytoplankton, the basis of the marine food chain. Photo Gary Papageorgiou
Wednesday 4 March 2020
Irina Peterson Monegasque explorer in the Pacific
Irina Peterson, of Romanian nationality but a Monegasque at heart and founder of the Ocean Amazon Project, has been selected as the sole representative of the Principality of Monaco to board the sailboat eXXpedition, making a round-the-world tour from October 2019 to September 2021. Irina has therefore embarked on a campaign to study plastic pollution in the middle of the Pacific, where one might imagine - unfortunately wrongly! - that Humankind has had no impact on these vast regions of the seas which will allow us to live on our Planet, when there are no longer 7.6 billion but 9 or 10 billion people in less than thirty years. After a stay in the Galapagos where Irina Peterson led a mission for the Prince Albert II Foundation, our Monegasque explorer, supported by the Yacht Club of Monaco, embarked on a fourteen-day expedition between the Galapagos and Easter Island. "It was intense, sometimes difficult. An unforgettable and really useful experience!"explained Irina enthusiastically, as she set foot on the island with its immense stone statues.
As part of its own purpose, the OceanoScientific philanthropic association has modestly participated in the expedition of this disciple of Jacques-Yves Cousteau by entrusting her with the latest model of the GoPro camera, so that the images of this exceptional sailing expedition can raise the awareness of the widest possible audience about Ocean conservation, thereby helping Sovereign Prince Albert II to fight in favour of the conservation of marine biodiversity. Irina Peterson can now add the title of OceanoScientific Ambassadress to her visiting card as an Ocean explorer.
On January 30, from left to right: Bernard d'Alessandri, Secretary General and CEO of the Yacht Club de Monaco, Irina Peterson, explorer, and Yvan Griboval, President of OceanoScientific, handing over the complete GoPro equipment so that Monaco's representative on board the eXXpedition can report on returning from her remarkable adventure.
Photo OceanoScientific