Voices from the Indian Ocean: episode n°6

Voices from the Indian Ocean, by Elise Rigot. Episode n°6

All along the route of the Monaco 2022 Explorations mission to the Indian Ocean, visual artist Elise Rigot documents the expedition’s progress through sound: scientists in action, animal sounds or natural ambiences, stories; through each character, the voices of the Indian Ocean bear witness to a culture, a heritage, but also to this quest for discovery, knowledge and truth. Voices of attachment, recounting the relationship that the people on this mission maintain and live with the Indian Ocean on a daily basis. The podcast echoes these voices, weaving together scientific accounts, life stories and the atmospheric sounds of this very special crossing.

Episode n°6: Sundy’s clam

Late one evening, Sundy Ramah triumphantly showed me a still-wet clam. It wasn’t just any clam, but a species he and his team had been researching for a long time, the Tridacna rosewateri, a species that was known to be endemic to Malha’s Saya Bank, discovered in the late 1970s during a Russian expedition and archived in Saint Petersburg. During the expedition, Sundy was able to collect several Tridacna rosewateri, part of her thesis dream. We tried to archive this specimen using a 3D scanner, but the complexity of the form didn’t allow us to easily perceive all the riches on the clam’s surface, but something remains of the complexity of clams and the multiple lives that are attached to them or cling to them.

Elise Rigot

Sundy's clam

Artist Elise Rigot interviews Mauritian scientist Sundy Ramah aboard the S.A. Agulhas II, November 20, 2022©MonacoExplorations

The Tridacna rosewateri clam. This bivalve mollusc, endemic to the region, was collected on the Saya de Malha bank as well as at St Brandon during the Monaco Explorations 2022 Indian Ocean mission©Francis Marsac_IRD_MonacoExplorations

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