9 The Underwater Landscape
137
We must not forget either the growing use of the expression ‘underwater landscape’ in narratives penned by divers and in written texts relating to underwater
diving (Dutrieux and Michel 1993; Apnéa 1995; Dutrieux et al. 1999). Olivier
Musard (2003) considers that ‘this is the result of the rising number of observers
now exploring the underwater world and needing stable markers in their quest to
discover and understand the submarine environment through which they travel. This
process of anthropomorphizing the sea that we discover inevitably leads to semantic cross-overs, as we seek to express the unknown.’ What better notion than that
of a landscape to express the encounter between the attentive gaze of a human observer and a specific portion of space, associated with the individual experience born
from the relation between a given moment in time, the human eye and the area of
space abandoned to his or her gaze? The emergence of a landscape implies not only
what the eye may behold—its physical components and the biophysical processes
it supposes—but also the manner in which our gaze is exercised, a combination of
socio-cultural factors and the psychological state of the individual experiencing the
landscape. The landscape may then, in this light, be defined as a ‘social construction
possessing a material dimension in which biophysical processes take place and an
immaterial dimension composed of social representations, aesthetic, emotional and
symbolic value systems’ (Luginbühl 2005).
While emerged landscapes (i.e. above water, whether terrestrial or not) have frequently been studied by academics, submerged landscapes have enjoyed far less
attention and a whole host of questions remain unanswered. How do we apprehend
underwater environments? Is there a landscape-centred apprehension of that underwater space, both as regards the object being observed or the observing subject?
And do underwater landscapes evoke the same idea as terrestrial landscapes, or are
they different? Are they experienced according to the same patterns of experience,
practice, perception and representation that pertain to emerged landscapes? Are underwater landscapes compared and contrasted, differentiated or assimilated in terms
of terrestrial landscapes?
Without claiming to offer an in-depth response to all these questions, this article
sets out to establish a better understanding of the relationship between man and the
accessible part of the underwater world, by defining the ways in which we apprehend
this specific environment, exposing a prism of how we interpret and understand the
world about us through our experience of landscapes (between material and physical components, social constructions, sensorial and emotional appraisals), drawing
on those who have first-hand knowledge of these subaqueous spheres—underwater
divers.
Our analysis of this question, although preliminary in nature and merely intended
to provide pointers for further investigation in a particularly vast field of study, is
based on the results of a survey carried out within the framework of a scientific and
technical symposium organized by the Agence des Aires Marines Protégées (Agency
for Protected Marine Areas) on the theme of underwater landscapes in March 2011 in
Brest. As part of a research cooperation agreement between theAgency and theADES
laboratory (CNRS), the survey was intended to do the ‘spadework’ and provide the
foundations for an overview of how the underwater landscape is perceived through the
eyes and experiences of divers. The results of this preliminary survey were intended
137
We must not forget either the growing use of the expression ‘underwater landscape’ in narratives penned by divers and in written texts relating to underwater
diving (Dutrieux and Michel 1993; Apnéa 1995; Dutrieux et al. 1999). Olivier
Musard (2003) considers that ‘this is the result of the rising number of observers
now exploring the underwater world and needing stable markers in their quest to
discover and understand the submarine environment through which they travel. This
process of anthropomorphizing the sea that we discover inevitably leads to semantic cross-overs, as we seek to express the unknown.’ What better notion than that
of a landscape to express the encounter between the attentive gaze of a human observer and a specific portion of space, associated with the individual experience born
from the relation between a given moment in time, the human eye and the area of
space abandoned to his or her gaze? The emergence of a landscape implies not only
what the eye may behold—its physical components and the biophysical processes
it supposes—but also the manner in which our gaze is exercised, a combination of
socio-cultural factors and the psychological state of the individual experiencing the
landscape. The landscape may then, in this light, be defined as a ‘social construction
possessing a material dimension in which biophysical processes take place and an
immaterial dimension composed of social representations, aesthetic, emotional and
symbolic value systems’ (Luginbühl 2005).
While emerged landscapes (i.e. above water, whether terrestrial or not) have frequently been studied by academics, submerged landscapes have enjoyed far less
attention and a whole host of questions remain unanswered. How do we apprehend
underwater environments? Is there a landscape-centred apprehension of that underwater space, both as regards the object being observed or the observing subject?
And do underwater landscapes evoke the same idea as terrestrial landscapes, or are
they different? Are they experienced according to the same patterns of experience,
practice, perception and representation that pertain to emerged landscapes? Are underwater landscapes compared and contrasted, differentiated or assimilated in terms
of terrestrial landscapes?
Without claiming to offer an in-depth response to all these questions, this article
sets out to establish a better understanding of the relationship between man and the
accessible part of the underwater world, by defining the ways in which we apprehend
this specific environment, exposing a prism of how we interpret and understand the
world about us through our experience of landscapes (between material and physical components, social constructions, sensorial and emotional appraisals), drawing
on those who have first-hand knowledge of these subaqueous spheres—underwater
divers.
Our analysis of this question, although preliminary in nature and merely intended
to provide pointers for further investigation in a particularly vast field of study, is
based on the results of a survey carried out within the framework of a scientific and
technical symposium organized by the Agence des Aires Marines Protégées (Agency
for Protected Marine Areas) on the theme of underwater landscapes in March 2011 in
Brest. As part of a research cooperation agreement between theAgency and theADES
laboratory (CNRS), the survey was intended to do the ‘spadework’ and provide the
foundations for an overview of how the underwater landscape is perceived through the
eyes and experiences of divers. The results of this preliminary survey were intended