Do we lack affection for what we protect?

Summary

Thinking of the “marine feeling” as an affective awareness of the ocean, in order to question the links between affection and protection.

Deep Blue Foundation’s Research section follows a monthly theme through three publications. A first interview, based on a topical issue, opens a space for expression. A second focuses on a sector and sets out to promote its various professions. Finally, an article, as a production, takes on the monthly theme directly in order to unfold its stakes. This publication is an article.

Contributing to a way of thinking about the marine feeling, as an affective awareness of the ocean, makes it possible to explore the relationship between affection and protection. Because the way we look at the ocean shapes it, we wish to pay attention to what thinking about oceanic affection says about the way protection is envisaged, but also about research’s relationship to its object. Because the ocean is more than a space of transit, more than a surface through which the world trades and comes into being, we must be able to take an interest in it as it is, that is to say in a supple and labile way.

The feeling of the sea and the making of uses.

The marine feeling is first and intuitively understood as all the affections we feel for the ocean. It would be the sentimental expression of a particular experience. We would rather understand it as the existence of the ocean, in the mode of representation, in individual and collective consciousness. This mode of existence, which shapes the way we relate to the real thing, rests on supports that act as so many mental intermediaries. Taking an interest in these supports amounts to trying to characterise the calibration of our gaze.

Let us take as a first example the figure of the sailor. In its evolution, it corresponds to the forms taken by the marine feeling in the collective imagination. The sailor was born to the French public through the literature of naval officers. In the novels of Loti and Farrère, he embodies man facing the ocean¹. Contemplative, he looks at the sea from the deck of his ship, and the ballet of the waves espouses his inner turmoil. The ocean becomes a nature we love because we stand facing it. With Conrad, the sailor becomes a worker; he is no longer the lover of the ocean but the one who endures harsh working conditions. Easy-going, he lends himself to drinking and to the company of the women of the ports². A romantic character, the sailor is first a figure who contemplates the ocean for us. As a worker, he then becomes the naive man who suffers his working conditions as much as his desires. This scopic regime of the ocean is tinged with strangeness: that of the position of the subject who looks, and that of the object that is seen. Just as the sailor is shaped to become the ocean-subject, so the ocean has a role: that of being presented to the view of this particular type of gaze. It is a freeze-frame that is nothing other than a freeze for the image³. Let us put it another way: because the ocean cannot be the object of a simple gaze, the supports through which we are allowed to look at it must be as much the object of our attention as what they allow us to see; they are the codings of our use. And this use, as we know, degrades. The ocean is acidic: surface pH on the high seas has fallen by 0.017–0.027 pH units per decade since the late 1980s, and it is very likely that the decline in pH in the surface layers has already moved beyond natural variability over more than 95% of its area. The ocean is emptying: the average abundance of native species in most major terrestrial habitats has fallen by at least 20% on average since 1900. More than 40% of amphibian species, almost 33% of coral reefs and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened. This degradation, as we know, is anthropogenic: the ocean has absorbed nearly 30% of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by human activities⁴.

Seeking to know what the coding of our gaze on the ocean costs it in degradation is a line of study in climate epistemology. In Facing Gaia, Bruno Latour argues that the uses it would seem right to fight against are characterised by an omission of the ocean’s sensible dimension. The conceptual categories our consciousness inherits make the coding of our gaze a process of distancing. Contradictorily, the way we have loved the ocean has dug an exclusionary distance between man, the subject of this particular type of gaze, and the ocean, reduced to a nature serving as a rampart against cultural anxieties. More precisely, Latour asks us to take the Nature-Culture pair no longer as a resource that gets us out of our difficulties, as Loti’s or Farrère’s sailor was, allowing the landsman to look at the ocean, but rather as the focus of our attention. In other words, taking the ocean and its stakes together requires questioning the way our gaze is coded by these intermediary supports. To attempt to characterise the contribution of this thinking about oceanic affection, let us say that it shows that protection must take an interest in the way the thing lives for us, because that is the matrix of our uses. Let us therefore not say that we lack affection for the ocean; rather, our gaze upon it (and its coding) constitutes a major axis of change in ocean issues. As a way of directing the gaze towards its protection, it makes it possible to involve citizens in devising solutions.

Protection is always already a matter of affection.

And indeed, protection already borrows an affective discourse. Let us take a second example to see this, that of umbrella figures. This compound term is a tool for raising awareness of maritime issues. Since it is not easy to account for the mechanics of biodiversity, well-known people and organisations highlight certain emblematic species, relying on the presupposed affection of collective consciousness for those same species, in order to draw attention to a broader problem. The typical figure is the whale: efforts are made to build a particular interest in protecting cetaceans so as to protect all the other species that live in the same environments⁵. By linking a species to its environment, the consequences of human actions on a species are drawn inductively, while making our uses of natural environments more responsible. As a form of exploitation of affection, umbrella figures shape collective consciousness by cultivating in it a sense of fragility. The axiom of this approach is the following: protecting the ocean means enabling everyone to take ownership of its stakes. Awareness-raising is essential in this sense. Once again, meeting maritime challenges through awareness-raising allows protection to feed the whole of the effort in which it falls to everyone to participate. Facing the ocean calls for a twist in our affective dynamics: because the ocean is fragile, we must make its image fragile. Note how this affective discourse on the ocean, as a culture of fragility, restores to the coding of our gaze the way in which the ocean is sensitive. The major difficulty of this affective discourse nevertheless remains its strength: it makes it possible to touch on the global character of the ocean’s fragility. Indeed, this fragility is as much the language of the affective discourse used in awareness-raising as a characteristic of the approach of the ocean sciences. The fragility of the ocean-space is built by a multitude of field sciences, whose conclusions result from the interweaving of countless small facts, like so many fragile threads in a no less fragile fabric. Let us put it another way: if the robustness of scientific data on the ocean corresponds to the fabric making up the ocean’s fragility, this robustness draws its strength from the fragile character of each of the small facts and models working to weave this global fragility. The ocean’s fragility is therefore plurivocal: it designates as much the fragility of scientific data (which nevertheless underpins the robustness of its conclusions) as the language in which awareness-raising addresses consciousness. Again rather contradictorily, taking an interest in the image of the ocean we maintain in collective consciousness restores to the ocean its primary sensitivity. Its characteristic fragility infuses, and efforts to think about it are so many ways of contributing to the globalisation of its fragility.

The management of protected areas and the culture of marine sensitivity

In practical terms, affective thinking is also a way of assessing the management of protected areas. Let us take the example of the Lagoon of the Réunion marine park, as studied by Jean Pavageau (2004)⁶. The approach of this study is clear: to make thinking about the evolving sensitivity of the inhabitants of Réunion’s coastline contribute to a more general assessment of the impact of this protected area. The thesis it defends shows this well: managing the Lagoon touches every aspect of the citizen’s personality. First, rationality: the Lagoon is a particular space with its own ecological system that must be respected, and every actor is responsible for their use of the coastline. Next, sensitivity: the Lagoon constitutes a cultural heritage representative of the local inhabitants’ value system. Finally, imagination: it is a “marvellous world” exploited by tourism, conducive to holidays, play, dreaming and enchantment. This type of research completes the illustration of how coherent the sensible approach is for resolving ocean issues. In practical terms, it makes it possible to contribute to the assessment of protected-area management. To stimulate innovation, locally or globally, we must take an interest in the way the ocean lives for us.

The ocean is a power to act.

This global character of the ocean’s fragility, whose plurivocity affective thinking exploits, resonates particularly with the international call for a global approach to the ocean-subject. On the research side, this translates into the creation of cross-cutting research groups. The CNRS, for example, with the GDR Omer⁷, takes the multidisciplinarity of specialists as its paradigm. By looking for the differences between current research at sea and society’s priorities in order to invite citizens to join this effort, this research group contributes directly to the involvement of protection and awareness-raising. On the side of international cooperation, it translates into the multiplication of meetings. Three United Nations Ocean Conferences, for example, have taken place since 2017⁸. This global approach, as a quest for an effective science-policy interface to face maritime challenges, cannot simply mean occasions for meetings. By seeking to bring together the different parties which, in their individual fields of action, would make up the whole of the solution, the solution becomes a construction rather than an affection. Yet if observing the ocean seeks to cultivate the sensitivity of the ocean environment, it is precisely because it is a power to act. The moment we are in is a particular one: the data collected command action. It is as if the ocean were speaking with all its sensitivity through what we can observe of it. We do not mean that multiplying occasions for meetings is undesirable, quite the contrary; we seek to show that this call for a global approach gains by relying on affective protection efforts to cultivate, in people’s consciousness, the global character of the ocean’s fragility.

Hugo Sannier, Head of the Research section at Deep Blue Foundation.

Bibliographic information

Type

Research

Date

February 2026

Author

Hugo Sannier

Editor

Deep Blue Foundation

Study Centre

ONS

Original language

French

Original document

PDF, 8 pages

Full text

Partial transcription of the document (see note above)

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