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The Mediterranean - a living world?
2012-01-31 10:22
What: Méditerranée: Splendide, Fragile, Vivante
Where: Monaco Oceanographic Museum
When: daily, 10am to 6pm, from now until 21 March 2012
Entry: €14 (€7)
For the last eighteen months, a giant octopus, measuring 25 metres from tentacle to tentacle, has been greeting visitors to Monaco's Oceanographic Museum. Commissioned from Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, the great sea creature has been strung up over the entrance to a fantastic exhibition on the subject of the extraordinary biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Octopus - minus its tentacles - goes up at the Musée Oceanographique
...and it's up!
But despite this sensational welcome, the purpose of the exhibition is far more serious. The Med, it seems, is dying. And it's up to every one of us to try to halt its inevitable decline before it becomes an overheated swamp, filled not with giant octopuses - but certainly with a super-abundance of jellyfish.
Living 'au bord de la mer', it's easy to take the Mediterranean for granted. But when you stop to consider our relationship with that vast body of water, perhaps it's time to focus again on its role and future.
Known in ancient times simply as 'The Great Sea', the Med is exactly that, covering nearly a million square miles, and whether you see it as the cradle of civilizations, the major trading route between Europe, Africa and Asia, a historically plentiful supplier of seafood, or the tourist attraction par excellence, there's no question of the power it has exerted over us since the beginning of human existence.
The twentieth century, however, has revealed how surprisingly fragile such vast ecostructures can be, and this new exhibition at Monaco's Oceanographic Museum focuses on four areas which show just how vulnerable the sea now is: three of them concerning acidification of the ocean, the invasion of non-indigenous species, and overfishing.
The fourth (without wanting to deter thousands of summer beach-lovers) is the huge proliferation of jellyfish, which have replaced less robust creatures as warmer waters and changing ecology have caused indigenous species including fish to die out. The Oceanographic Museum of Monaco has chosen to illustrate the proliferation of jellyfish with a ballet of aurelia aurita in a tank designed especially for the occasion.
The exhibition, which coincides with the publication of a lavishly illustrated 175-page book (above), is open until March 2012. Its aim is to reach out to its audience and provide ideas for getting involved with simple actions to preserve the Mediterranean sea as a living, life-enhancing environment.
Click on the link at the top of this page to visit the official website of the exhibition and find out more.