Free the Marion Dufresne!

We are still in port, blocked by the strike of the harbor workers. Now the deal is that we get the harbor to ourselves, while the striking workers, camped in front of the main gate, are ensuring that nobody disturbs our ship on sabbatical.

Science has been all talk and no action so far (daily seminars, dinner discussions, dreams...). But witnessing much political action around us, we got into it ourselves. Our colleagues from La Réunion spent many hours at the main gate, trying to understand the concerns of the workers, and whether a pragmatic solution for our four blocked containers might be found. We also turned to the island's Prefect, since our experiment represents a major investment of taxpayer's money, and pertains to volcanic risk assessment.

The photo shows an earlier outreach effort in the "Free the Marion Dufresne" series: Wave "Good morning and SOS" to the Prefect. We learned that his helicopter was supposed to survey the scene of the deserted harbor early in the morning, so we also wanted to be seen. We chose the parking lot outside the ship, and white towels for good visual contrast, but the helicopter never appeared.

Yesterday we did manage to make direct contact with the Prefect, got a helpful response, and thought our problem solved – until that hope evaporated again at the harbor gate. Five days after our scheduled departure, our cruise leader can still only dream about scientific action on the seafloor...