Preface
The European Landscape Convention was adopted on 20 October 2000 in Florence
(Italy) and came into force on 1 March 2004 at European level and on 1 July 2006 in
France. It provides a framework for discussion and reflection to promote the protection, management and planning of European landscapes, in their every dimension.
Pursuant to the terms of the Convention, landscapes must be identified and assessed.
It is therefore vital that we turn our attentions today to the concept of underwater
seascape or underwater landscape: the epistemological and scientific issues are extremely important, particularly because, if we want to take this notion into account,
it will combine various disciplines, involve widely accepted concepts (ecosystem,
habitat, biocoenosis, biotope, facies, population) and open up new avenues to be
explored with new currents of thought and topics of research or work (photographic
observatories of underwater seascapes for example).
Reference to the “underwater seascape” dates back at least to the nineteenth
century. It swiftly became a term used by deep-sea divers in the 1940s–1950s and
has been employed increasingly by French scientists since the 1990s. Branching back
to a process of territorialisation and individuation of the underwater littoral fringe,
it is gradually gaining ground through portrayal by image, film and photography,
but also by new three-dimensional mapping technologies. Such representations offer
continuous overviews of an area to which we often take a fragmented approach. The
sea is no longer represented like a completely isotropic area; it is discovered, in every
sense of the word, revealing a mosaic of habitats, shapes and reliefs and their related
wildlife components, figured and figurative objects in interaction with environmental,
social and economic issues and in need of management and protection.
The concept of underwater seascape or landscape is a growing subject of study,
as scientific literature attests. Publications on the topic have multiplied in recent
years, addressing both the question of scalar levels and interaction with key ecological concepts, as well as connectivity within landscape ecology. The appeal of
underwater landscapes and the soar in leisure and tourist activities also raise issues
of social representation, access and value. The challenges in terms of research are
therefore real and important. Similarly, we can question the way public policies on
environmental and landscape protection take underwater seascapes into account. At
the bridge between materiality and immateriality, between nature and culture, marine
ix
The European Landscape Convention was adopted on 20 October 2000 in Florence
(Italy) and came into force on 1 March 2004 at European level and on 1 July 2006 in
France. It provides a framework for discussion and reflection to promote the protection, management and planning of European landscapes, in their every dimension.
Pursuant to the terms of the Convention, landscapes must be identified and assessed.
It is therefore vital that we turn our attentions today to the concept of underwater
seascape or underwater landscape: the epistemological and scientific issues are extremely important, particularly because, if we want to take this notion into account,
it will combine various disciplines, involve widely accepted concepts (ecosystem,
habitat, biocoenosis, biotope, facies, population) and open up new avenues to be
explored with new currents of thought and topics of research or work (photographic
observatories of underwater seascapes for example).
Reference to the “underwater seascape” dates back at least to the nineteenth
century. It swiftly became a term used by deep-sea divers in the 1940s–1950s and
has been employed increasingly by French scientists since the 1990s. Branching back
to a process of territorialisation and individuation of the underwater littoral fringe,
it is gradually gaining ground through portrayal by image, film and photography,
but also by new three-dimensional mapping technologies. Such representations offer
continuous overviews of an area to which we often take a fragmented approach. The
sea is no longer represented like a completely isotropic area; it is discovered, in every
sense of the word, revealing a mosaic of habitats, shapes and reliefs and their related
wildlife components, figured and figurative objects in interaction with environmental,
social and economic issues and in need of management and protection.
The concept of underwater seascape or landscape is a growing subject of study,
as scientific literature attests. Publications on the topic have multiplied in recent
years, addressing both the question of scalar levels and interaction with key ecological concepts, as well as connectivity within landscape ecology. The appeal of
underwater landscapes and the soar in leisure and tourist activities also raise issues
of social representation, access and value. The challenges in terms of research are
therefore real and important. Similarly, we can question the way public policies on
environmental and landscape protection take underwater seascapes into account. At
the bridge between materiality and immateriality, between nature and culture, marine
ix