Stopover in Sète 2024 sponsored by Ifremer: “Giving a scientific body to the festival of maritime traditions”

Maria Ruyssen, directrice de la station Ifremer de Sète. DORIAN CAYUELA

L’Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer parraine Escale à Sète 2024. Maria Ruyssen, la directrice de la station sétoise depuis trois ans affirme le lien avec les gens de mer.

What is the link between Ifremer, the maritime heritage and traditions of Sète ?

This is precisely what we are working on as part of sponsorship at Escale à Sète. We are not scientific mediators, but the sponsorship we have for the festival obliges us, as a scientific institution, to work on our link to the territory, to its history. We are carrying out work to collect local fishing and shellfish farming practices but also those who come from elsewhere and who testify to their relationship to their practice and to nature. We see similarities and the solutions that they were able to implement. Like the Japanese who showed solidarity with France when the oyster ponds were decimated by an epidemic in the 1970s and the Japanese oyster helped save a profession. And vice versa. We bring them experimental modules in calm waters. And they have a clam restoration project, for which we have formed a collaboration.

The link seems particular to Sète between professionals and Ifremer ?

The link with professionals is the work that we have been doing for years. It’s my hobby horse. We are rebuilding the partnership by relying on public policies. We believe that they are capable of being sentinels of the marine environment. They have the keys to structure their future and to alert us to what is abnormal compared to before. We often remember the fact that we provide scientific opinions which can provide new standards and also reductions in activity. We provide diagnoses but sometimes we have no solution, like on blue fish (sardines, anchovies which are shrinking in size, Editor's note) for example, and we still don't know what to do. But Escale is an opportunity to celebrate this collaborative work.

Is Escale the way to better publicize the work of Ifremer ?

Ifremer is not sized to respond to all requests, but the researchers are very involved. It’s a gold mine, a host of projects, capacities to promote, results to disseminate with the educational work that this implies. Hence these moments of knowledge transfer built with Escale. We have a huge amount of work with schools, 500 children from CM1 to V for half a day to make them want to learn but also to protect nature, to save the professions that make a living from it and have know-how. new, because we have no pragmatic daily knowledge of the environment.

L’Ifremer also has its on-board sailors, who are they ?

A scientist is not necessarily someone behind a desk. Some embark on ships of the French oceanographic fleet for long campaigns, confronting the hazards of the marine environment. As on the Europe, which operates surveillance campaigns lasting several weeks in the Mediterranean with a Genavir crew (Genavir is a shipping company operating ;mainly the ships of the French Oceanographic Fleet, these sailors accompany the scientists, Editor's note). We also celebrate it at Escale through an exhibition.

What is the role of Ifremer in UNESCO sponsorship of Stopover in Sète for the protection of maritime heritage?

We have sponsored Escale since 2022 and we want to anchor it in a real function so that this approach is useful. That is to say, we wish to provide a scientific body to the festival on the aspect of the protection of living maritime heritage. We help the festival to continue their UNESCO labeling by contributing, for example, to free workshops, to the creation of a village on the theme of the environment and to the transmission of quality scientific culture. We have a huge amount of work with our partners for schools from CM1 to fifth grade with free workshops for 500 students, including one to meet international delegations. The same goes for the general public. Unesco is a long-term project with a scientific social ethnography project at stake.

This Thursday, March 28 at 5 p.m., for the inauguration of the environment village, the artist Gauthier Fleuri will perform a performance around the City of Fish, a work made of shells built with young people from the local Mission d& rsquo;insertion and intended to be submerged as an underwater shelter. I subscribe to read more