The World Ocean

The whole family can explore life in the Earth’s five oceans which together make up the World Ocean.

Follow whales on their journey around the globe, float in the current as you search for plankton, swim through schools of tuna, walk on the beach to the rhythm of the tides, go fishing in the North Sea, navigate the Southern seas and dive for grouper. 

One Ocean

The five oceans are all connected to form one single space known as the World Ocean, where water and living creatures alike move freely, without borders. 

Amazingly diverse marine life can be found both on and deep below the water’s surface.


The largest creatures in the world live here (blue whales) as well as the smallest (bacteria), along with thousands of different types of plankton, which are the base of the marine food chain and a source of oxygen for our planet. In many ways, the ocean is ‘alive’. It acts as the heart and lungs of the Earth and determines every form of life to be found there. For humanity, this rich treasure  is  also a tremendous source of food, the stability of which is now threatened by over-use.

The Ocean is also an ocean in motion, a living ocean.

The Californian tank 

With its forest of kelp, its leopard sharks, its smooth hounds and its garibaldis, it is an important feature of this Ocean that regulates the Earth’s climate, the composition of the atmosphere and the water cycle. At the surface, the water moves under the action of the winds, going from the equator to the poles and vice versa.
 
The areas in which water is drawn up from the depths, known as upwellings, bring nutritive mineral salts to the clearer surface water, are very rich in life. These upwelling regions are very important for fishing: while they represent barely 3% of the ocean area, they provide around 40% of the world’s catch.

Voyages in the Northern Seas

Here, along the shoreline of the Opal Coast, you’ll find the rocky foreshore, the resorts of Audresselles, Ambleteuse, Cap Gris Nez, Cap Blanc Nez and the sandy beaches; and further out, areas of shingle, schools of codfish and rocky overhang populated with crabs and langoustines.

Carried by strong ocean currents, the waters of the English Channel and the North Sea are constantly being renewed. These cold, often choppy waters are rich in marine life. Very early on, men came to find their food in these fish-filled waters, which also provide refuge to birds, seals and dolphins. Today, the region is the centre of a host of activities ranging from tourism to exploitation of the sea as a source of energy. The countries bordering the Channel and the North Sea are faced with a major challenge: the need to preserve this exceptional natural heritage at the same time as ensuring their economic development.

Stopovers in the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean is a virtually closed sea. It has a total coastline of no less than 46,000 kilometres! In earliest Antiquity, man settled along these hospitable shores, which saw the birth of great civilisations. The Mediterranean is renowned for its unique fauna and flora, its beautiful scenery and its incomparable historical heritage. Today, these riches are enjoyed by an increasingly large population.

Travelling along the Mediterranean coasts, the visitor finds the grouper and its sea fans, a colony of sea horses among the posidonia, the moray eels, the red coral, and a multitude of other animal and plant species, characteristic of this sea and often endangered by mass tourism and human activities in general. The barracudas, which can be seen in a spectacular aquarium, floodlit from the bottom, are a good example of species that came in through the Suez Canal: recent inhabitants of the Mediterranean and now found in abundance along our French coasts as a result of global warming.

While we are looking for ways to preserve our most precious resource, whales offshore undertake an incredible journey every year around the globe, guided by plankton supplies and the birth of their young.