Gombessa III – Antarctica, In the Footsteps of the Emperor Penguin (2015)

Gombessa III was part of a wider project initiated by movie director Luc Jacquet (who won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2006 with March of the Penguins) to measure the impact of global warming in this polar region, and to capture the attention of the general public. The headquarters of the expedition have been set up at the French Dumont d'Urville scientific base in Adélie Land. This was the very first time a team of technical divers has been able to go beneath the sea ice in this region. Each of the dives, never previously undertaken, represented an achievement on both human and technical levels, and delivered the very first naturalist images of Antarctica’s deep-sea ecosystems. At the request of several research groups, particularly those at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and the National Center for Scientific Research in Marseille, the Gombessa III team contributed to the inventory of deep-sea fauna that is being created in relation to the issue of global warming. In addition, all of their footage has been shared with researchers for use in scientific publications.

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