Jerome Delafossespecialist in water peoples in the famous Canal Plus documentary series, “Les Nouveaux Explorateurs”, is also the author of the documentary on the massacre of sharks, The Sharks of Wrath. More recently, he circumnavigated the globe aboard Energy Observer, the first boat powered by hydrogen and renewable energies.
At the microphone of Bixente Lizarazuhe tells us about his extraordinary journey, his childhood dreams and his fights to defend sharks and the oceans.
“The Sharks of Anger”, a documentary to denounce the massacre of sharks
Born in Saint-Malo, Jérôme Delafosse has always been rocked by stories of corsairs and explorers, which made him want to explore the world in turn, but in a different way. Senior reporter photographer, before moving on to documentaries, he embodies from 2006 the documentary program “Les Nouveaux explorers” on Canal Plus. He is thus going to meet the peoples of the water and shoot more than 40 documentaries from one end of the planet to the other.
It was during these many experiences that he began to rub shoulders with the world of sharks and to dive alongside them. However, in just 20 years of exploration, he finds a drastic decline in the shark population, yet present in the oceans for millions of years for certain species, such as longimanus, oceanic white tip sharks. According to a study published in 2013 in the scientific journal Marine Policy100 million sharks are caught each year in the world (even if this figure is difficult to establish with precision).
He then wants to tackle this problem and try to understand why we kill these sharks, “hallucinating lords, among the most beautiful and fascinating creatures you can come across in the oceans”. He thus achieves The Sharks of Wratha documentary that seeks to determine the various causes behind the massacre of sharks.
On the one hand, he discovers that the consumption in Asia of shark fin soup has dramatic consequences for sharks: they are fished in huge quantities, before their fins are cut off and they are thrown back alive. Europe is a very important hub for this trade, since 20 to 30% of the fins found on the Asian market come from Europe, with the French, Spanish and Portuguese fleets taking advantage of a virtual absence of regulation. for shark fishing in Europe.
On the other hand, he observes that tuna fishing is itself responsible for the disappearance of many species of sharks. It’s a “fishing, which when it is industrial, kills a large number of sharks. There is a type of fishing which consists of putting on hoists, these are lines that can measure up to 100 km in length, and to catch a tuna, you catch seven to eight sharks. Sharks are often dead on the line once they’re caught, because they drown when they’re not moving.”
Jérôme Delafosse thus realized that all these species, tunas and sharks, are considered raw materialwith prices as for wheat, coal or oil.
“Today, whether for sharks or for tunas, unfortunately, as long as we consider the oceans as a bottomless pit, a resource to be picked up to enrich ourselves, we will never save the oceans. – Jérôme Delafosse
Defend the oceans, biodiversity and respect for naturethis is the fight that Jérôme Delafosse intends to wage today more than ever, not only by campaigning to rehabilitate the image of shark, essential to the ecosystem of the oceans and of incredible beautybut also through “The New Explorers” – interrupted in 2014, the series has just resumed -, and the world tour he made aboardEnergy Observer.