Please note that these pictures are provided here at low resolution, high resolution copies can be made available upon request.

(c) 2008 Atheris Laboratories. Formal written permission must be obtained prior to any use. Contact us.

CONFIELD-2 - Expedition to the Chesterfield Islands

Our latest scientific expedition has pushed us to the Chesterfield Islands, a remote place in the middle of the Pacific ocean, some 800 km away from any trace of civilization. Professional scientific divers shared the 10 places on board with a TV-team for 16 unbelievable days on a sailing boat to these remote islands that are the heart of the CONCO cone snail genome project for health. Dozens of species of cone snails and a new species of deep-sea algae were collected for scientific studies, and amongst increadible things we had the chance to observe a nudibranch mollusk of nearly 50 cm in size. About one hundred of living cone snails of which 50 Conus consors joined our aquariums in Geneva in the frame of the CONCO project. More than 30 hours of professional broadcast quality film were accumulated, mainly during our night dives when we collect our biological samples. This will serve as a basis to a 52 minutes documentary movie on CONCO, and we also plan a 26 minutes discovery film on the fascinating Chesterfield Islands themselves, both for TV broadcast and DVD diffusion.

Participants to the mission were:

• Sacha ARANICKI, Movie director, Caravan Production, Geneva, Switzerland;
  
  
• Pierre-Philippe AVRON, Skipper, Catamania, Noumea, New Caledonia;
  
  
• Michaël CLEMENT, Cameraman, Caravan Production, Geneva, Switzerland;
  
  
• Alain GERBAULT, Scientific diver, Toxinomics Foundation, Noumea, New Caledonia;
  
  
• Sandra GODOY-FIGUEROA, Cooker, Noumea, New Caledonia;
  
  
• René HOLLIGER, Logistics, Geneva, Switzerland; 
  
  
• Renée MENEZ, Scientist, Toxinomics Foundation, Paris, France;
  
  
• Jean-Louis MENOU, Scientific diver, IRD, Noumea, New Caledonia;
  
  
• Roberto RINALDI, Underwater cameraman, Rome, Italy; 
  
  
• Reto STÖCKLIN, Head of mission and scientific diver, Atheris Laboratories & Toxinomics Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland.
  
  

All this would not have been possible without the help of our friends Jacques & Michèle Pusset, Florent Gerbault and Claude Payri. We are most grateful to the government of New Caledonia and to the French Institute of Research for the Development (IRD) for their support. This expedition has been suported by the European Community thanks to the CONCO Project: LIFESCIHEALTH-6 Integrated Project LSHB-CT-2007, Contract Number 037592.

More galleries

 

 

Top of page