TRITON’s dream was born in the Mouths of Bonifacio. Where the Mistral often blows violently, where the rounded shapes of the granites – impossible to scratch, but that one can softly caress with one’s gaze – overlook the tormented coasts of Corsica. White sandstones overlooking the sea, viewed from rugged mountains, covered with snow in winter.

And under our keels, dozens and dozens of times dolphins have emerged. Fast, agile, joyful. And then, more discreet, more rarely, whales revealed themselves for a few seconds. Just the time for us to hear their thunderous spout or to spot their backs, which emerge from the sea with their dorsal fins that appear just long enough to reflect the flash of a sun-ray on their wet skin. Whales, dolphins, pilot whales, sperm whales and more rarely killer whales: the cetaceans that live in our sea. Highly evolved mammals, extraordinary creatures, with such perfect shapes, yet…so fragile, exposed to anthropogenic aggression, no longer safe even in their environment, even if they are “gentlemen” in their own world.

This is how the TRITON Foundation was born, with the objective of protecting the cetaceans that populate the Mediterranean.

So, we head towards the open sea, carefully looking for any hints of spectacular life forms. But how frustrating that debut was! How difficult to see our dear creatures for a moment, and then watch them disappear for good among the waves. Until the next sighting.

They are mammals, it’s true. Like us, they have lungs, they need to breathe; so they hit the sea surface and throw the oxygen-poor air out into a spout. Then they fill up again and vanish. Because their life is below. Because some species can descend for thousands of meters while others are able to look for dense plankton banks. Others devour tons of squid. Everything happens under water. In a universe, which humanity knows less than the surface of the moon.

Someone in our crew has sailed for many years on Jacques Yves Cousteau’s Calypso. The commander loved the sea, dreamt of protecting it, but he always used to say: “People protect what they love, but you can’t love what you don’t know!” We have made this message our own; simple, essential, yet inescapable. And we decided that our way to help the cetaceans is getting to know them.

To follow knowledge, that is to engage in scientific research.