It’s been a long determined fight to spread awareness of the need to protect our Oceans. For Prince Albert II it started well over 30 years ago… and reached a major milestone on June 8th, 1992 when World Oceans Day was created.

The date of June 8th marked the end of the Earth Summit in Rio, during the third United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.

Protecting the Oceans is a generational mission for the Grimaldis. It is particularly relevant in this centenary year 2022 honouring the passing of Prince Albert I. It goes back to Albert I’s voyages of discovery in the oceans in the previous two centuries. Not forgetting that the Grimaldis for over 700 years have been at the helm of a sea-faring nation.

At the age of 22, in the 1870s, Albert 1er became passionate about oceanographic exploration. He then began to organize numerous oceanographic and cartographic scientific expeditions in ships built entirely for research, equipped with laboratories like the Hirondelle or the Princess Alice.

In 1889 he founded the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, inaugurated in 1910, and it was in 1906 that he built the Oceanographic Institute of Paris, entirely devoted to the sea, with collections brought back from his explorations, fauna and flora. His expeditions continued, and in the early 1900s, aboard Princess Alice, he took part in 4 explorations of the Arctic and Spitsbergen.

And so that indomitable spirit to protect the Oceans is led in our modern world by Prince Albert II who around this World Oceans Day in 2022 has released his first book L’Homme et l’Océan (Man and the Ocean) which is: “the story of this long-standing fight”by the Sovereign, whose Foundation was created in 2006 following his trip to the North Pole, where he was able to see the dramatic effects of global warming.

“It is my duty to take my part in the challenge launched to my generation: to find solutions in order to preserve our planet, our most precious asset”, declares Albert II on the website of the publishing house. Flammarian.

The Book is timely and builds momentum towards major upcoming events which Albert II mentions:

the Lisbon conference which will be held from June 27th to July 1st,
but also the COP 15 which will take place next October in Kunming, China.

These rendezvous “must be an opportunity to advance concrete measures. The limitation of plastic use, the improvement of wastewater treatment, the regulation of fishing, the limitation of exploitation and the protection of the most fragile ecosystems must find in these appointments opportunities for concrete progress.”

SAS Prince Albert II of Monaco’s Book on Man and the Ocean (to preserve the oceans to protect humanity) is a call to arms to “reconcile humanity and the sea around a more sustainable development model”.

The book has already stirred positive critique featured on the publisher’s site: “Nourished by personal and family memories (…) ‘Man and the Ocean’ plays with emotion.” – Provence

“It is his personal fight that Albert II of Monaco recounts his cry of alarm but also the search for solutions which constitutes his daily life.” – The Echoes

The lovely 150-page book written by Prince Albert II is now on sale for 10 euros in all bookstores.