Michel Pichon, Biological Oceanographer, University Professor, Officer in the Order of "Palmes Académiques", is an expert
on coral reefs, which he has studied over the last 50 years. He was research leader of several coral reefs research teams,
operating in most major reef areas in the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean (Mascarenes, Comoros, Madagascar, Maldives and the seas
around Arabia), and the Pacific Ocean. He has been based for more than 22 years in Australia, first at James Cook University.
Townsville, then as Deputy Director, Australian Institute of Marine Science. He then did work principally on the Great Barrier
Reef, with his students and Australian colleagues, but also elsewhere in the Pacific in cooperation with American, Japanese
and French teams. He has published more than one hundred scientific papers in international scientific journals, mostly on coral
reefs, and co-authored four books on the reef corals of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. He is a member of the scientific board
of the "Fondation Albert 1er Prince de Monaco", Council member of the International Society for Reef Studies and scientific
expert with the Global Marine program, International Union for Conservation of Nature. He now lives in Australia, where he is
a Tropical Marine Consultant and Honorary Research Associate at the Museum of Tropical Queensland, in Townsville.
Francesca Benzoni holds a PhD from the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Francesca is a marine biologist specialised in the
integrated systematics of reef-dwelling scleractinian corals. Since her master's degree in the Gulf of Aden, Yemen, 12 years ago
she has been diving and studying corals throughout the Indo-Pacific and has become increasingly interested in the problem of
boundaries between species of reef corals. She is currently involved in different projects addressing the study of the biodiversity
and biogeography of scleractinian corals through a multidisciplinary approach including traditional and innovative tools.
Claude-Henri Chaîneau is an engineer with a PhD in Environment. As a specialist in environmental issues, he has published significant
scientific papers on hydrocarbon biodegradation. He joined Total E&P in 2001, spent three years in Indonesia and is currently in
charge of environmental matters for projects in the Middle East. He has led environmental baseline studies, environmental impact
assessment studies and also audits. In addition, since 2005 he has been working on biodiversity matters with Total and in particular
he joined the scientific team in charge of coral monitoring for the Yemen LNG project. As a qualified and experienced diver, he took
the opportunity of this project to launch a three-year scientific assessment of the corals biodiversity in Yemen.
Éric Dutrieux holds a PhD in marine ecology from the French University of Montpellier and is also an engineer in agronomy.
His experience in international consulting brought him to develop several projects in various countries and especially in the
Middle-East. While developing the commercial activities of Creocean in these countries, he has also been the project manager
of large marine monitoring projects, particularly in Yemen. His experience in this country dates back to 1997. Commercial
diver and photographer, he is the author of over a hundred technical reports and publications in relation to marine ecology,
evaluating water pollution and management of coastal areas. Furthermore, he has also written four books related to marine
ecology and scuba diving including a dozen non technical publications on underwater exploration and the world of scuba diving.
For more information on Creocean visit www.creocean.fr
