Elbahrain.net Not many children can say they took their first steps on board a yacht in the Arctic’s northwest passage. But Tom can. He spent three of the first four years of his life at sea, with his parents Ghislain Bardout and Emmanuelle Périé-Bardout — ocean explorers and founders of Under The Pole, an organization on a mission to document the deep.
The Bardouts estimate that both their children — Tom and Robin, now aged 8 and 12 respectively — have spent around half their lives aboard the family’s expedition schooner, “The Why.”
They’ve explored the furthest reaches of the planet, from polar ice to tropical reefs, as part of a mission to document the ocean’s mesophotic, or “twilight,” zone, an area that lies between 30 and 150 meters (100 and 490 feet) below the surface.
When on land, the family is based in Concarneau, a small coastal town in Brittany, northwestern France. When at sea, the 18-meter-long yacht becomes their home, shared with around 10 other people, including scientists, doctors, a cook and a teacher.
Despite their unusual setup, Emmanuelle insists they still have a normal routine. “We work like normal people and have kids at school,” she says.
However, most ordinary people don’t do the same work as the Bardouts. In fact, few have seen what they have seen in the deep ocean – and that’s the point.
While oceans cover 70% of the planet, they remain some of the least explored and understood ecosystems on Earth. Less than 30% of the global seafloor has been mapped in any detail and experts estimate that up to 91% of marine species are still unknown to science.
What is known is that these ecosystems are coming under increasing stress, threatened by a rise in sea temperature, leading to mass bleaching events, as well as pollution and overfishing. The Bardouts believe that by documenting what lies beneath the surface, they may be able to raise awareness of the threats and aid its recovery.
“We go to places where nobody has been before,” says Emmanuelle. “I think when you are doing exploration like we are doing, it gives us a huge responsibility.”
Mediterranean forests
Most recently, the family were exploring waters a bit closer to home, in the Mediterranean Sea. For Under The Pole’s DeepLife program, which is part of the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, they went on a series of two to three-month missions, searching for what they call “marine animal forests” in Greece, Italy and France.
These are diverse ecosystems in the deep ocean, full of sponges and corals such as red gorgonia and black coral, that form something like a terrestrial forest, with its own microclimate that provides a refuge for a range of species
“When you find a marine animal forest, you find an oasis, you find life, you find a very rich ecosystem that is living all together,” says Ghislain. “It’s really this oasis of life we want to show to the world.”
Over the weeks that followed, they collected data on every aspect of the ecosystem, from currents and acoustics to bacteria and sea life. They plan to collate all of this research and present their findings in June 2025 at the United Nations Ocean Conference in France. By proving the importance of these ecosystems, they hope to persuade governments to protect these areas and take action against the fishing practices that are damaging them.
Deep diving
It is only in recent decades that technology has advanced enough to enable dives into the twilight zone, and it is still an incredibly specialist operation, requiring years of training. Divers use “rebreathers,” originally designed for military purposes, which absorb carbon dioxide from exhalations and recycle it as oxygen. This allows them to stay underwater far longer than with scuba tanks, and because it doesn’t create bubbles, it causes less disruption to the sea life.
