The Sea Around Us MSc student, Anna Luna Rossi (fourth from the left), with her NGO Reserva colleagues at UNOC 2025.
By Anna Luna Rossi.
June 2025 marked the third edition of the United Nations Ocean Conference, hosted in Nice, France, and co-organized by France and Costa Rica. UNOC3 falls within the Ocean Decade initiative to create a framework for communicating and using ocean knowledge to generate real-time actions for safeguarding our marine resources.
French President Emmanuel Macron, being interviewed at UNOC 2025. Image by France.TV.
During an interview with French national television, President Emmanuel Macron was confronted with images from David Attenborough’s Ocean documentary, which shows the gigantic nets of bottom trawlers operating in the Mediterranean dropping hundreds of tonnes of all kinds of fishes on a boat after razing the seafloor and everything in their way.
On French National Day, July 14, 2017, the Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Daniel Pauly, woke up to some exciting news: President Emmanuel Macron had issued a decree naming him Chevalier de la Légion D’Honneur.
Later that day, Pauly received a phone call from the French consulate in Vancouver. He was told that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had nominated him in recognition of his work researching the impacts of fisheries on marine ecosystems.
The Chevalier is a distinction in France’s National Order of the Legion of Honour and it is granted, for life, to individuals with a minimum of 20 years of public service or 25 years of professional activity with “eminent accomplishments.” Knights belong to The Order of Merit, which was created in 1963 by President Charles de Gaulle.
Following months and weeks of excitement and preparation, on November 16, 2017, the knighting ceremony was held at the University of British Columbia’s Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Daniel’s family, closest friends, colleagues, and students were joined by a select group of diplomats, dignitaries, famous environmentalists, and university representatives for the special occasion.