Chapter 5
Underwater Landscapes and Implicit Geology.
Marseilles and the National Calanques Park
Jacques Collina-Girard
Abstract The implantation of the new national park in the Marseilles Calanques
requires a juridical framework to protect these exceptionally attractive coastal and
underwater landscapes. In order to analyze the reasons behind the spectacular nature
of these submerged landscapes, it is essential to evoke the geological and climatic
specificity of this coastal karst, submerged at the end of the last glaciation. The
keys to understanding these formations are the lithology, the intense fracturing and
intersecting of the massif determining coastal dissections and the eustatic factor. Besides these geological factors, the underwater landscape bathes in fluctuating light
linked to the instability of winds and tides. The biological occupation completes the
makeup of an underwater landscape specific to the Marseillse region. The Marseilless
example demonstrates that underwater landscapes are the result of interlocking reasons, from the fundamental and determining geological structuration to the adaptive
modalities of biological and human occupation, from the prehistoric artists of the
partially submerged Cosquer cave to wrecks from the last war and Antique wrecks
excavated by archaeologists.
Keywords Underwater landscape · Karst · Marseilles · Geology · Underwater
diving · Eustatism
The first modern pressure regulator, invented by Georges Comeinhes in 1934, was
used for the inaugural exploration of underwater landscapes in Marseilles during a
dive from Frioul Island at a depth of − 53 m, well before the use of the first CousteauGagnan diving-suit in 1943 on the Var coast. Thanks to these pioneers, the Marseilles
region (Fig. 5.1), which boasts some of the most spectacular Mediterranean landscapes, is widely known to divers. This notion of landscape is certainly not objective.
It is implicitly pictorial and viewed through artistic subjectivity. Through reductionist
and scientific work, the naturalist confers a scientific coherence to a puzzle which,
for the profane, does not appear to have any.
J. Collina-Girard ()
LAMPEA, UMR 7269 du CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université
Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme, 5 Rue du Château de
l’Horloge, BP647, 13094 Aix-en-Provence, France
e-mail: jacques.collina-girard@univ-amu.fr
O. Musard et al. (eds.), Underwater Seascapes, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03440-9_5,
53
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
Underwater Landscapes and Implicit Geology.
Marseilles and the National Calanques Park
Jacques Collina-Girard
Abstract The implantation of the new national park in the Marseilles Calanques
requires a juridical framework to protect these exceptionally attractive coastal and
underwater landscapes. In order to analyze the reasons behind the spectacular nature
of these submerged landscapes, it is essential to evoke the geological and climatic
specificity of this coastal karst, submerged at the end of the last glaciation. The
keys to understanding these formations are the lithology, the intense fracturing and
intersecting of the massif determining coastal dissections and the eustatic factor. Besides these geological factors, the underwater landscape bathes in fluctuating light
linked to the instability of winds and tides. The biological occupation completes the
makeup of an underwater landscape specific to the Marseillse region. The Marseilless
example demonstrates that underwater landscapes are the result of interlocking reasons, from the fundamental and determining geological structuration to the adaptive
modalities of biological and human occupation, from the prehistoric artists of the
partially submerged Cosquer cave to wrecks from the last war and Antique wrecks
excavated by archaeologists.
Keywords Underwater landscape · Karst · Marseilles · Geology · Underwater
diving · Eustatism
The first modern pressure regulator, invented by Georges Comeinhes in 1934, was
used for the inaugural exploration of underwater landscapes in Marseilles during a
dive from Frioul Island at a depth of − 53 m, well before the use of the first CousteauGagnan diving-suit in 1943 on the Var coast. Thanks to these pioneers, the Marseilles
region (Fig. 5.1), which boasts some of the most spectacular Mediterranean landscapes, is widely known to divers. This notion of landscape is certainly not objective.
It is implicitly pictorial and viewed through artistic subjectivity. Through reductionist
and scientific work, the naturalist confers a scientific coherence to a puzzle which,
for the profane, does not appear to have any.
J. Collina-Girard ()
LAMPEA, UMR 7269 du CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université
Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme, 5 Rue du Château de
l’Horloge, BP647, 13094 Aix-en-Provence, France
e-mail: jacques.collina-girard@univ-amu.fr
O. Musard et al. (eds.), Underwater Seascapes, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03440-9_5,
53
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014