COELACANTHE SHIPPING: BALLESTA REMET CA

The 5 April 2013 at 20h30 hours, the diver and naturalist Laurent Ballesta, accompanied by a team of divers specially trained at great depths, researchers from the South African institute SAIAB, and 6 scientists from the National Museum of Natural History share in South Africa for 40 days of diving to meet a mythical animal: the coelacanth.

Called locally Gombessa, this peaceful giant 2m long that was thought to have disappeared since 70 millions of years ago and rediscovered alive in 1938 is considered the greatest zoological discovery of the twentieth century:
- It carries with it the traces of the passage of fish to the first terrestrial vertebrates with 4 legs
- It is, with its pedunculated fins and its primitive lung, the living and unexpected witness of the outflow of the waters 370 million years ago.

The coelacanth has unleashed heated debates for almost a century between creationists and scientists. It is probably the wildest animal that has been the most dissected in the world and yet we know almost nothing about its way of life.
Very rare and living more than 100 meters deep, very few direct observations have been made so far and the project GOMBESSA will for the first time to make observations and scientific experiments in contact with live coelacanths.
To reach this living legend, Laurent Ballesta and his team of divers will have to join daily the caves of Jesser Canyon by -120m, a depth where every minute spent at the bottom is paid long hours of decompression before reaching the surface.
In contact with the animal they will be able to implement the scientific protocols devised by Professor Gaël Clément, paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History and South African biologists Kerry Sink and Angus Paterson of the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SANBI / SAIAB).

The GOMBESSA project is the result of 2 years of scientific, logistical and human preparation and has requested the intervention of numerous technical partners for the design of new equipment.
The expedition was sponsored by the Haute Horlogerie Blancpain and will be the subject of a TV documentary of 90 min in prime time on the Arte channel.

Live and share the project GOMBESSA on: www.coelacanthe-projet-gombessa.com