Women, science & the sea: from pioneering whistleblowers to committed contemporaries, an embedded story for ocean sustainability

The Sea Around Us, the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, the French Embassy to Canada and the Alliance Française de Vancouver are happy to welcome Dr Camille Mazé, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the University of La Rochelle, who will present her lecture “Women, science & the sea: from pioneering whistleblowers to committed contemporaries, an embedded story for ocean sustainability.”

In this lecture, Dr Mazé will illustrate the journey that some brave women decided to embark on at the beginning of the 20th century to provide – at a time when ocean sciences were a male-dominated field - a social and cultural perspective on fishing and overfishing in particular.

“These women had to brave many storms - literally and figuratively – in order to become oceanographers or maritime ethnographers, and ultimately serve as models for researchers today,” Dr Mazé pointed out.

At a time when global change is demanding urgent actions to protect our global ocean, Dr Mazé poses the question: “What are women in science doing today to honour the legacy of these first whistleblowers?” “What role did these pioneers play and what role do contemporary women play in preserving marine environments?”

Dr Camille Mazé is a social and political scientist specializing in ocean and coastal environmental science. She is a research fellow at CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and works at the University of La Rochelle in the laboratory LIENSs (Coastline, Environment and Society). Her main area of research is ocean governance linked with decision-making processes and natural resources management. She previously taught at the University of Western Brittany in Brest. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences and is qualified to direct research. Dr Mazé founded, in 2015, the research network APOLIMER where she manages projects in France and overseas with an interdisciplinary approach to improve coastal communities’ sustainability and to develop political anthropology of the sea in strong interaction with natural sciences (biology, biogeochemistry, ecology).