To give back a voice to the ones that we have forgotten … to listen to the very depths of the ocean and hear the sounds of sorrow, fear and distress of these neglected marine mammals… To dive in, and realise that there is no silence anymore… for men will destroy everything up until the very last leaf, the very last breath, while others will spend their lives trying to give a voice back to those that don’t have one… When Michel told me about his project, I was immediately captivated by the beauty of this unique initiative… to listen to the ills that we are doing to our oceans… to dive amongst the whales and hear what the folly of man has done. I am extremely proud and honoured to be godmother and an ambassador to this unique, essential and wonderful project. We live and behave here on earth as though every part of it belongs to us, instead of being eternally thankful that it has welcomed us amongst it… this blue planet, originally so pristine, comprised of 70% oceans, and yet, again with contempt, we chose to call it Earth. It is time to repair our mistakes. To plunge into the water… and look for even the slightest bit of remaining silence…
After more than 25 years of research, having founded the Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB), a research laboratory at the Technical University of Catalonia (BarcelonaTech, UPC, Spain) to study the effects of noise on the marine environment, as well as a spinoff company, SONSETC.com, to accompany the effort of ocean users to mitigate the impact of their activities, I am now taking a definitive step forward. The Sense of Silence Foundation is the third and ultimate threefold objective of a lifetime project aimed at providing an environmentally responsible solution to the worldwide noise issue. Created in the deep-ocean (listentothedeep.com) and awarded by the Rolex Awards for Enterprise in 2002 (http://www.rolexawards.com), this technology is now mature to expand from the floated rainforest to extreme polar conditions, facing the challenge of giving back a balance to Nature through the analysis of its sounds.
Michel AndréPresident, The Sense of Silence Foundation
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