112
C. Ronzani and A. Freytet
7.4.5 Reference Points for the Invisible Underwater World:
Figuring and Transfiguring the Marine Toponymy
Landscapes are also given existence by naming places and sites. We cannot talk
about a nameless landscape, so naming sites is a process of recognition. A good part
of a landscape designer’s work thus involves determining and naming places (very
often by collecting names used by people who have invented them or who frequent
the sites), so that they gain recognition in people’s minds, in political debates and in
management schemes. In this way, names are given to useful places (by fishermen
for example), or those that people like (by divers). Underwater toponymy is a specific
field. It is primarily developed by fishermen who, without ever seeing them, know
the seabeds well and name their principal fishing sites, any dangerous spots and any
irregular features that catch their nets or attention. Such hands-on knowledge acquired
through fishing nets produces a first set of names which will gradually take on the local
accent and spelling. Then come the names given by divers who actually see, albeit
only partially, the underwater sites. Several sources offer inspiration, the first being
the relief (Fig. 7.10). We therefore find names such as “dome”, “barrel”, “cathedral”
or “lion’s rock”. Architectural and urban metaphors are often used. Animals and
plants found on site are another source of inspiration, e.g. “groupers’ valley”. Lastly,
where they are present, wrecks will predominate. Very few maps contain all of these
names. A map is a group of small, separately known areas interspersed with large
unknown parts. We are not yet able to name vast geographic expanses of underwater
landscapes like we do in an atlas of terrestrial landscapes. This approach will expand,
particularly through systematic coastal surveys on several different scales.
7.5 Enhancing, Promoting, Revealing and Planning Underwater
Areas: Towards “Marine Museographical Immersion”
If any landscape, particularly underwater, is a matter of perceptive immersion, then
all cultural mediation, education, popularisation or communication in natural areas
can be museographical and scenographic immersion where landscape is used. More
than an enclosed space or a plain mediation object (a board set up in the landscape),
the forms and nuances of the landscape can be mobilised to reach out to the observer.
Confining landscape to photos, picture postcards, boards, galleries or showcases
on dry land would deprive us of a valuable and sometimes rare resource in France,
Europe and the rest of the world; this is also true if we settle for “interpretive centres”
and museums designed solely as architectural objects rather than places (outdoors
or in water). Wouldn’t “in situ” scenography be better than these “ex situ” means
delocalised from their subject matter?
C. Ronzani and A. Freytet
7.4.5 Reference Points for the Invisible Underwater World:
Figuring and Transfiguring the Marine Toponymy
Landscapes are also given existence by naming places and sites. We cannot talk
about a nameless landscape, so naming sites is a process of recognition. A good part
of a landscape designer’s work thus involves determining and naming places (very
often by collecting names used by people who have invented them or who frequent
the sites), so that they gain recognition in people’s minds, in political debates and in
management schemes. In this way, names are given to useful places (by fishermen
for example), or those that people like (by divers). Underwater toponymy is a specific
field. It is primarily developed by fishermen who, without ever seeing them, know
the seabeds well and name their principal fishing sites, any dangerous spots and any
irregular features that catch their nets or attention. Such hands-on knowledge acquired
through fishing nets produces a first set of names which will gradually take on the local
accent and spelling. Then come the names given by divers who actually see, albeit
only partially, the underwater sites. Several sources offer inspiration, the first being
the relief (Fig. 7.10). We therefore find names such as “dome”, “barrel”, “cathedral”
or “lion’s rock”. Architectural and urban metaphors are often used. Animals and
plants found on site are another source of inspiration, e.g. “groupers’ valley”. Lastly,
where they are present, wrecks will predominate. Very few maps contain all of these
names. A map is a group of small, separately known areas interspersed with large
unknown parts. We are not yet able to name vast geographic expanses of underwater
landscapes like we do in an atlas of terrestrial landscapes. This approach will expand,
particularly through systematic coastal surveys on several different scales.
7.5 Enhancing, Promoting, Revealing and Planning Underwater
Areas: Towards “Marine Museographical Immersion”
If any landscape, particularly underwater, is a matter of perceptive immersion, then
all cultural mediation, education, popularisation or communication in natural areas
can be museographical and scenographic immersion where landscape is used. More
than an enclosed space or a plain mediation object (a board set up in the landscape),
the forms and nuances of the landscape can be mobilised to reach out to the observer.
Confining landscape to photos, picture postcards, boards, galleries or showcases
on dry land would deprive us of a valuable and sometimes rare resource in France,
Europe and the rest of the world; this is also true if we settle for “interpretive centres”
and museums designed solely as architectural objects rather than places (outdoors
or in water). Wouldn’t “in situ” scenography be better than these “ex situ” means
delocalised from their subject matter?