2023-12-07 20:15:09
Dr Cécile Gaspar, veterinarian of the Te mana o te moana association and Maud Fontenoy in “Blue, an ocean of solutions. The Bahamas.” FLAB PROD/CANAL+
CANAL+ – THURSDAY DECEMBER 7 AT 11 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY SERIES
The first woman to row across the North Atlantic in October 2003, then the Pacific in 2005, sailor Maud Fontenoy almost failed in her epic attempt to circumnavigate the Southern Hemisphere against the tide in March 2007 – and not “around the world”, a name strictly defined by the World Sailing Speed Record Council and whose criteria were not respected.
“Maud ended up arriving through tenacity”, then indicated Jean-Luc Van Den Heede, on whose boat the 29-year-old young woman achieved her feat. Since then, she has put her notoriety at the service of the oceans, creating her foundation in 2008, and going so far as to accept, in June 2015, the position of environment delegate for the Les Républicains party. A political detour which earned him many enmities.
Read the portrait (2015): Article reserved for our subscribers The big dive to the right by Maud Fontenoy
Through tenacity… Maud Fontenoy returns to the screen with the documentary series Bleu, which she imagined and in which she puts herself on stage. Perhaps out of a taste for challenges, she chose, in the first episode on the Bahamas, to defend the unloved of the seas: sharks, overfished for their fins. Beyond the idyllic and telegenic setting offered by these 700 islands and islets off the coast of Florida, they are in fact home to the world’s first sanctuary for these sharks.
Humor and outspokenness
Every bather has “1 risk in 3.7 million of being attacked by a shark”, warns the comment. Strangely, the statistics are not reassuring. On the other hand, the speakers relax with their humor and their frankness. Thus, Stuart Cove, Sean Connery’s diving double as James Bond, who takes Maud Fontenoy to evolve among the sharks.
Read also (2023): Article reserved for our subscribers Sharks resisted better than other species in the face of the fifth great mass extinction
Another strong personality, Cristina Zenato – “Thirty years she has been taming sharks and removing their hooks with her bare hands.” After a long dialogue, the two women go diving to offer the most astonishing scene of the film: a large shark literally lies down on the sand to be caressed before asking for… a kiss.
Among the other notable scenes, the walk on the beach where part of it was filmed Jaws (1975). But also snorkeling with a traditional conch fisherman, injecting amoxicillin into sick corals, visiting the Coral Vita experimental coral nursery, or wandering in the mangrove, near the Shark Lab, the most large known nursery of the lemon shark.
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If we can regret the lack of originality of the staging, while animal documentaries continue to be renewed, this Bleu by Maud Fontenoy on the Bahamas has the merit of embodying the complexity of the issues, giving voice to entrepreneurs, researchers and fishermen in this country where 68% of resources come from ecotourism. Eighteen months before the United Nations Ocean Conference, which will be held in Nice in 2025.
Blue, an ocean of solutions. The Bahamas, by Agathe Lanté (Fr., 2023, 58 min). On MyCanal until January 14, 2024.
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