What are the biggest concerns for the oceans and coast around France?
There is an enormous amount of pollution and 80% of it comes into the sea from the land. Take the Mediterranean – it is a little sea and very fragile. Each year there is about 50 times the amount of oil spilled into it as was involved in the Erika disaster [when a tanker was wrecked off Brittany in 1999]. What is known as le dgazage is often responsible [where oil residues are deliberately discharged by ships cleaning their fuel tanks at sea]. There are positive things happening too though, as regards the sea and coast – for example the Conservatoire du Littoral buys up coastal land so it is protected and no one can build hotels on it. More than 1,000km of coast has been safeguarded for the public. I always like to be optimistic and I am happy when I see positive initiatives going on – like the recent Grenelle de la Mer which looked at all the important maritime politics issues – fishing, energy [eg. offshore windmills or tidal energy], the fight against pollution, raising childrens aw
