SFJO’s 40th anniversary will take place on November 20 and 21, 2024

In 2024, SFJO France will celebrate its 40th anniversary under the theme “Nature and Culture”, closely linked to the Japanese concepts of “Sato-yama” and “Sato-umi”. This harmony between Man and Nature is one of the aspects that characterizes our relationship with the Société Franco-Japonaise du Japon (SFJO Japon), an older society which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2022[1].

This celebration will take place at the Station marine d’Endoume, a research institute in Oceanography and Marine Oceanology founded in 1882 by Antoine-Fortuné Marion, a zoologist and member of the Académie des Sciences in 1884, then of the Académie de Marseille in 1886.

Along with the Musée de la Mer in Biarritz, its aquarium was one of the oldest in France. In 1954, under the direction of Professor Jean-Marie Pèrès, the first DEA (Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies) in Oceanography-Marine Biology was created in the marine station laboratory. Since 1983, the marine station has been part of the Marseille Oceanology Center on the Luminy campus (Aix-Marseille University). The station is the oceanographic part of the Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers Institut Pythéas of the CNRS and the University of Aix-Marseille.

Its current director, Professor Thierry Perez, director of research at the CNRS, has kindly offered to bring us together for this celebration on the station’s facilities, at the request of Professor Charles-François Boudouresque, administrator of the SFJO, Professor Emeritus at the University of Aix-Marseille and specialist in Mediterranean Posidonia.

The precise program is currently being defined and will be announced in September. The Japanese Consulate General in Marseille and the Japanese Embassy in France have been invited.

Contacts have also been made with the Marseille City Council, a pioneer in the development of oceanography in France.The marine station, located on the Malmousque peninsula, is named after one of its neighborhoods: Endoume.

[1] Created in 1960 by a group of Japanese and French scientists, including Professor Sasaki, one of the precursors of deep-sea diving in Japan, with the FNRSIII bathyscaphe arriving in the port of Yokohama in 1958.