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My name is Bernard Kloareg, I am the director of the Roscoff Biological Station,
a research and education center, in the field of marine biology and ecology.
The center was created years ago, in 1872.
Our staff has doubled in less than 10 years.
We have grown from 150 to 300 people
which demonstrates that there is a very strong interest
in the study of marine biodiversity.
Marine organisms are extremely interesting to study
when it comes to understanding the evolution and the origins of life.
The difficulty in exploring these ecosystems is having access to them.
Technological advances, especially in the field of genomics,
give us access to the genetic heritage of all forms of life under the sea
and show us that the extent of diversity
is not just 2 or 3 but most likely 100 times higher to what we assumed 10 years ago.
There are still a lot of things to be explored.
When comparing molecules that are present in algae to that of humans,
they have a lot in common.
To some extent, we have seen that humans have more in common with algae than with terrestrial plants.
Marine biodiversity has a genuine value for mankind.
This is not simply intuition, this is grounded in 35 years of research
and experience as a marine biologist,
and the more I move forward, the more I’m convinced that yes, there is something here.