The first person to hear it during one of his dives was French free diver Guillaume Néry, the secret player behind this whole operation who posted a video of the sound on his various … read moreaccounts, Wednesday, April 3rd. Thousands sea lovers and influencers shared this strange sound, extending its impact on social networks, immediately raising many questions. What is this sound? Where does it come from? What does it mean? The sound was emitted from a strange spherical beacon sunk in the depths of the ocean off La Rochelle, where the Sam Simon is currently on a mission combating fishing vessels which catch dolphins in their nets. This beacon was specially designed for an operation led by Sea Shepherd France and the TBWAPARIS advertising agency. The sound is actually a combination of different sounds: real undersea sounds and echoing laments from the living world, victim of man's over-exploitation: a harpooned whale, pilot whales hunted down in the Faroe Isles, dolphins caught in fishermen's nets, frenetic, agitated schools of fish packed together in trawlers’ nets. Inaudible, invisible and therefore overlooked atrocities. Sorted, amplified, processed and juxtaposed, these sounds resulted in a single, unique sound: “Sound of Sea”: an SOS from the ocean. The idea behind the device was to raise people's awareness of the urgent need to reduce our fish consumption. Political measures are too weak and too slow. It is time for each and every one of us to take real action: rethinking how we (de)consume the ocean and stop treating it like an inexhaustible pantry. Because scientists' forecasts are alarming: according to the United Nations, if nothing is done to curb the phenomenon of overfishing, fish populations will collapse by 2048. Without them, the ocean, the planet's leading climate regulator and oxygen provider, will cease to function. We won't survive the death of the ocean. Far more than protein, fish are the breath that connects us to life.
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