Seeing the invisible island, or how the Saya de Malha bank plays hide and seek with the S.A. Agulhas II and the crew of the Indian Ocean mission.
The impressions and feelings of Didier Théron, Mediation Manager for Explorations de Monaco, on these days dedicated to the exploration of an unknown and mysterious environment by the teams of scientists on board.
See the invisible island...
As we left Port Victoria in the Seychelles and set sail for Saya de Malha, I wondered if the invisible island would reveal itself to our inquisitive eyes, reveal its innermost secrets?
A quote from Antoine de St-Exupéry came back to me like a jingle.
You can only see well with your heart; what’s essential is invisible to the eye.
Today, I have the feeling that throughout these days I have witnessed a permanent game of hide-and-seek between the ship and these vast underwater plains made up of endless seagrass beds and scattered coral massifs, erratic sandbanks full of mystery, true invitations to explore further and further, deeper and deeper… Saya de Malha plays cat and mouse
Everyone here is aware of the privilege of taking part in a unique adventure, where you feel transported into another dimension, a little out of time.
A time frozen by the unfolding of scientific operations and repetitive daily gestures, a time that nonetheless passes at lightning speed.
The days fly by, and the countdown to the end of the mission is already underway.
Mentally, I try to visualize the invisible island, to give it a precise shape from the clues gathered here and there.
But if we’re talking about islands, for the moment I really only see one, omnipresent: our ship, a gliding refuge on the surface of this bluish immensity coiled around her.
Some might think that this heady blue, at once moving and static, holds us captive to the ocean.
Yet all it takes is a glance at the horizon, a moment spent on Monkey Island, high up in the clouds and wind at the top of the gangway, to escape into the distance, set sail, free your mind and thoughts from everyday constraints and soar like a great albatross at water’s edge.
The symbolic boundary of the surface is crossed several times a day by divers, ROVs and dredgers sent out by the ship to discover Saya de Malha.
Our explorers gradually tame the invisible island.
Fragments of truth, the samples brought aboard are precious and pampered, sorted and classified, packaged, fleeting witnesses to a hidden biodiversity full of promise.
The gold of Saya de Malha is not picked up by the shovelful.
To see the invisible island, you have to put your heart, passion and hard work into it.
In short, you have to work hard.
And the teams aboard the S.A. Agulhas II have plenty of it.
Harvesting the gold of knowledge is the price of self-sacrifice and perseverance, of doubt, of long nights of operations and sample conditioning, of sleep deprivation, of laboratory research and of the results that will follow the field mission.
When he speaks to the Little Prince in the tale, the fox is a thousand times right: you can only see well with your heart.
Didier THERON
Head of Mediation at Explorations de Monaco.
