00:00We do scientific activities, we measure, we cartograph the seabed with a sonar, and
00:29with a camera and a drag, we go down and we take images and samples.
00:33It shouldn't be there logically, that is, if you ask coral specialists, the reefs
00:49need light, they cannot grow in waters as sedimentary, it is true that there is a lot
00:54of sediment, little light, a lot of current.
00:57Basically, it's really a unique discovery, there is obviously the possibility of finding
01:01new species, it takes more time.
01:04There is another aspect that we want to work on, it is that this reef would actually serve
01:09as a corridor, a corridor for the species between the Caribbean and the Atlantic.
01:13And that means that thanks to it, there is a link between two ecosystems that we thought
01:18were completely separate.
01:26The threat is precisely the perspective of oil exploration, so exploration in the
01:41first place to see if there is oil, but obviously exploitation and that would mean dozens
01:45of activities, that would mean recurring pollution and above all a very high risk
01:51of black sea.
01:52The risk is high because we are in extreme oceanographic conditions, as we said
01:56there is a lot of current, we are on ultra-deep drilling, so the same, technologies that are
02:03dangerous.
02:04We are in exploitative or exploratory conditions that are similar to what happened in the Gulf
02:09of Mexico when there was the accident with Deepwater.
02:12And what the currents show is that pollution would be brought back to the coasts, and in
02:17particular from Brazil to the coasts of French Guiana.
02:19This is one of the messages that we want to send this weekend to Cayenne with the authorities
02:23of the Guyanese civil society.
02:26It is a question of coherence.
02:28We have a government that wants to be a champion of the fight against global warming and the
02:34coral reefs are among the most threatened ecosystems in global climate change.
02:40Macron was in Australia last week and he also talked about the importance of the protection
02:44of the coral reefs.
02:45So the logic would be that we think rather to protect these ecosystems, to create a
02:52protection system, rather than to look for the last drops of oil, when in the end you
02:57have to make the turn and get out of the air of hydrocarbons.
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