Beyond Traditional Maritime Knowledge?
For several decades now, the taking into account of traditional ecological knowledge and cultural values associated with nature stimulates alternative models of natural resource management. As part of a comparative project in French Overseas Territories, the author collected traditional knowledge about coral reefs. At the end of this comparative study, there was no choice but to admit the difficult identification of maritime traditions in several of the sites studied, mainly in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. This article seeks to understand the reasons for this. Drawing on intellectual and colonial history, it questions the specificity of the treatment of the sea in these territories, and identifies the driving forces behind their contemporary transformations.