SURFING A SEA OF CHANGE
BY JULIA ZALTZMAN
"Every year our grandpa took us out on his sailboat, Garlaban, which he designed. It had three masts, and was quite fat with low sides, so we used to think of it as a floating nutshell. It pitched and rolled, and we were often seasick, but we loved every minute. One summer we would go to Italy, the next to Spain. We visited Greece, Morocco, Tangier. We cruised the Mediterranean aboard that boat."
Patricia Ricard
"I believe we should all look to nature-inspired solutions but to do so, you have to understand and experience nature."
Patricia Ricard has long had an affinity with the ocean. It’s a connection strengthened over years spent snorkeling, swimming and enjoying hot summer days at sea as a child with her siblings, cousins and grandfather, Paul Ricard, an industry leader and progressive environmentalist.
“Every year our grandpa took us out on his sailboat, Garlaban, which he designed. It had three masts, and was quite fat with low sides, so we used to think of it as a floating nutshell,” she smiles. “It pitched and rolled, and we were often seasick, but we loved every minute. One summer we would go to Italy, the next to Spain. We visited Greece, Morocco, Tangier. We cruised the Mediterranean aboard that boat.”
At first the children’s parents joined. Then later, when they were older, they sailed just with their grandfather and the crew, one of whom had worked aboard Calypso with Jacques Cousteau, and would tell them spellbinding stories, teach them how to whistle to attract dolphins, and educate them on marine life. “Sometimes we shared night shifts with the crew. I loved the responsibility,” she muses. “We would stop to swim in great places, and I spent hours at the bow of the boat just looking at the waves. It was true happiness.”
Those formative years spent aboard Garlaban heavily influenced the woman she would become. And the Océanographique Institute, founded by her grandfather in 1966 to fight industrial pollution in the Mediterranean and for which she is now Chair, became a beacon for all that she loves. It was Dr Alain Bombard, a founding member of the Institute, who eloquently explained to a young Patricia the meaning of the word ‘pollution’. “I’ll never forget his amazing response, so easy for my child’s mind to comprehend. He said, ‘Pollution is what humans make and nature doesn't know how to deal with.”
Buoyed by these seminal experiences, Patricia would go on to become a spokesperson for the Ocean-Climate Platform, a consortium of 70 organisations working to protect the ocean by building bridges between scientists and policy makers. In February 2022, President Emmanuel Macron of France convened world leaders and ocean advocates for the One Ocean Summit, which took place aboard a large vessel moored in Port de Brest on France’s Finisterre peninsula. Patricia co-led the workstream The Ocean Provider in 2030. Her work centres around implementing projects that support human, economic and sustainable development involving companies, such as Pernod Ricard, private donors and European programmes.
“I have always enjoyed the Mediterranean with all my five senses. It smells incredible, it’s warm, it looks stunning in all directions, even at night. Growing up it was my normal, but I later realised that few children get that sort of opportunity,” she says. “It’s hard to love what you don’t experience.”
“The more we understand something, the more we fall in love with it. And we protect what we love.”
Much like the oceans it works to protect, the Institute’s work has global reach. In 2017, the research centre on Les Embiez island welcomed its first international student from South Korea’s Korea Maritime and Ocean University (KMOU) who, under the supervision of Dr. Robert Bune, worked on biofouling. He studied alternative materials for preventing organisms from attaching to submerged objects like ships’ hulls and the use of biocides in paint, including nature-inspired solutions that draw inspiration from living organisms and natural molecules.
“I believe we should all look to nature-inspired solutions,” says Patricia. “But to do so, you have to understand and experience nature.” It’s a sentiment that circles back to those days spent aboard Garlaban, something that is not lost on Patricia. As an adult, she has had the good fortune to enjoy sailing trips on friends’ yachts, but it is her time spent aboard research boats with scientists that has left the biggest impression. Her visit as an Institute representative to the sub-Antarctic islands took in 14 days at sea and 14 days at a scientific base.”
“Waking up there felt like the first dawn in the world. It was thrilling to see seabirds flying at you and penguins in vast colonies, but we also witnessed the impact of climate change first-hand – a carpet of dead baby penguins, washed up in their thousands having frozen to death following heavy rainfall.”
Accompanying Patricia on that trip was her daughter, Mathilde. “She was little then, but today she’s a scientist. I think it exemplifies how the experiences we have when young influence our actions in adult life. I truly believe that engaging with the sea from a young age is central to bringing about change for the future.”
To mark the Institute’s 50th anniversary in 2016, Patricia, and the Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard, Alexandre Ricard, launched Take OFF, Take Ocean For Future. The two-pronged programme supports young researchers from the international community and encourages businesses to offer corporate sponsorship for science. “The idea is to help young scientists take to the ocean, to be able to get on and off boats as they need, and to offer onboard residencies,” she explains.
Attributing a monetized value to plastic pollution is one of Patricia’s ideological solutions – “It wouldn’t be left floating around for long,” she muses. But her encouragement of yacht owners and charterers to reserve cabin space for scientists is an aspiration already taking shape around the world.
“We raise our children to be polite, respectful and well-mannered and we need to adopt these practices in our behaviour towards the sea. Replace the babysitter with a biologist, a ‘brainsitter’ who can teach children why the sea is blue, why the waves are white and help them to understand the emotions that experience conjures,” she says. “The more we understand something, the more we fall in love with it. And we protect what we love.”
