Just recently discovered, this unique coral reef is already endangered by the French oil company Total.
Greenpeace France is urging the French government to face up to its responsibility.
Greenpeace France is urging the French government to face up to its responsibility.
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00:00We do scientific activities, we measure, we cartograph the seabed with a sonar, and
00:29with a camera and a drag, we go down and we take images and samples.
00:33It shouldn't be there logically, that is, if you ask coral specialists, the reefs
00:49need light, they cannot grow in waters as sedimentary, it is true that there is a lot
00:54of sediment, little light, a lot of current.
00:57Basically, it's really a unique discovery, there is obviously the possibility of finding
01:01new species, it takes more time.
01:04There is another aspect that we want to work on, it is that this reef would actually serve
01:09as a corridor, a corridor for the species between the Caribbean and the Atlantic.
01:13And that means that thanks to it, there is a link between two ecosystems that we thought
01:18were completely separate.
01:26The threat is precisely the perspective of oil exploration, so exploration in the
01:41first place to see if there is oil, but obviously exploitation and that would mean dozens
01:45of activities, that would mean recurring pollution and above all a very high risk
01:51of black sea.
01:52The risk is high because we are in extreme oceanographic conditions, as we said
01:56there is a lot of current, we are on ultra-deep drilling, so the same, technologies that are
02:03dangerous.
02:04We are in exploitative or exploratory conditions that are similar to what happened in the Gulf
02:09of Mexico when there was the accident with Deepwater.
02:12And what the currents show is that pollution would be brought back to the coasts, and in
02:17particular from Brazil to the coasts of French Guiana.
02:19This is one of the messages that we want to send this weekend to Cayenne with the authorities
02:23of the Guyanese civil society.
02:26It is a question of coherence.
02:28We have a government that wants to be a champion of the fight against global warming and the
02:34coral reefs are among the most threatened ecosystems in global climate change.
02:40Macron was in Australia last week and he also talked about the importance of the protection
02:44of the coral reefs.
02:45So the logic would be that we think rather to protect these ecosystems, to create a
02:52protection system, rather than to look for the last drops of oil, when in the end you
02:57have to make the turn and get out of the air of hydrocarbons.