Jacques Landron, captain of The Alcyon, knows the favourite places of the whales thanks to his rich experience and to the information given by other navigators. But he is not using them in a careless way. Jacques is not a “whale watcher”. He is a lover of whales since he was sailing along the Corsican coast with his daughter who told him : “Look, Papa, a whale”. He was not believing in it and nowadays who believes in it? He turned his head and met his first fin-whale, a species of baleen whales - cetacean who feeds on small marine elements by filtering the water through their whalebones. Jacques personify the respect for environment: he is someone who looks at nature very curiously, he has a self-taught knowledge, always choosing to learn on his own that what he wanted to know. He has the wisdom of a mad, still looking at the world around him, not as human beings generally do, but without any desire to change it.

43 years old, after having been a journalist Jean Philippe Beau Douëzy is a field- ecologist. He has travelled a lot for environmental organisations, always with some hesitations between the Sahara desert, the South-American forests and the Mediterranean Sea. He is still now between, fascinated by their expanses and thinking that human beings have to learn to look at the world in a different rather than egocentric way. Not only the conservation of nature is a necessity for the future of the humanity, but also the respect for nature. In the beginning of the ninetieth he was launching the ecovoluntary-service for Europe Conservation. The association was able, thanks to the participation of several hundred volunteers, young and not so young passionate participants to its expeditions, to improve on an important level the scientific knowledge of the cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea. But it is still in its infancy. Since 1992, the association supports the establishment of a sanctuary for the cetaceans. This project had the support of the International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN) and the French, Italian and Monegasque governments decided to give them a concrete form (using the international conventions and agreements concerning the protection of marine endangered species. Today Jean Philippe Beau Douëzy is director of Ecoguide International.