The Earth-Ocean Mission opened on Sunday, 18 October, with the arrival of the sailing ship La Boudeuse in the port of Fécamp. On Wednesday, the ship will set sail for Brest, where she will rest for a few days before setting off for South America via Cape Verde, the Azores and Senegal.

A little history… and some explanations

The chosen vessel is not a traditional ocean-going ship. La Boudeuse is a 46-metre three-masted schooner, built in 1916. Nor is her captain, Patrice Franceschi, an ordinary seaman. As an adventurer and writer, he has fought in his corner all over the world, organising humanitarian missions, exploring the oceans and making the first round-the-world flight in a light aircraft (an Aviasud Sirocco) between 1984 and 1987. Between 2004 and 2007, he set off around the world in La Boudeuse in search of “the water people”.

Patrice Franceschi has dedicated his latest expedition to Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, the eighteenth-century explorer who sailed the oceans to Tahiti on a frigate named La Boudeuse. Bougainville was the first navigator to take “learned men” – as they were then known – with him and thus became the first to sail the seas in the name of science rather than simply for commercial, political, financial, military or diplomatic reasons.

Furthermore, the fact that the expedition is called Earth-Ocean indicates that it intends to investigate both land and sea with different objectives in mind: for example, to make an inventory of the flora and fauna, take oceanographic measurements, study deforestation, investigate rubber plantations, study problems related to the pollution of rivers by mercury and uncontrolled urban development, to estimate pollution and risingsea-levels and report on island populations.

In short, to measure the effect of human activities on the marine and terrestrial environment.

With the support of the Ministry of the Ecology and BNP Paribas, this scientific and educational mission will be completed in January 2011 with the aim of raising public awareness of all the environmental damage that is now occurring.