The summer of 2022 has not been easy for sea rescuers in southeastern France and Corsica. The teams of the Regional Center for Surveillance and Rescue Operations in the Mediterranean Sea (CrossMed) carried out, from May to September, no less than 3,258 operations at sea, an increase of 57% over three years. “We are experiencing an exponential increase in activities at sea, the population who came in 2020, unable to go further because of the Covid, remained”, notes Philippe Michaud, the director of CrossMed. Of the 8,000 people assisted, found or rescued, the services deplore 35 deaths, the majority of them swimmers.
Among the bad students, or “particularly sensitive areas” in the words of the maritime prefecture, the harbor of Cannes and the Gulf of Saint-Tropez. Marseille, for once, experienced a calmer summer on its coast. “Marseille is not the area that concentrates the most nautical leisure activities and on the body of water, many local residents know the harbor and its uses”, explains Vice-Admiral Gilles Boidevezi, maritime prefect for the Mediterranean. , which also cites the beneficial effects of the regulations of the Calanques National Park on leisure at sea.
An “impressive number” of jet ski ejections
Many rescues are linked to ignorance of the sea and its light boats. Nearly 45% of operations thus take place less than 300 meters from the coast. “Paddleboarding and kayaking are not very technical when the Mediterranean looks like a lake, however, as soon as the wind picks up, it requires strong endurance, recalls the director of CrossMed. The weather is anticipated, the topography of the places is learned. “”Urban phenomena are increasingly coming to the sea”, also underlines the maritime prefecture, with “the problem of overpowered machines, such as jet-skis and semi-rigid, and the impressive number of ejections involving traumas. »
Added to this is a new trend, “the phenomenon of uberisation of boat rental from private to private”. And the immediate consequence with, on the sea, boats that are not always well maintained and, at the helm, people who very often have not received, at least, a safety brief before departure. “There is an upward trend in waterways”, relates for example the CrossMed.
Faced with these findings, the maritime prefecture has reinforced its checks on near-shore speed, compliance with navigation prohibition or limitation zones, as well as driving and navigation permits. During the summer, it also mobilized three gendarmes on the Cannes lake, with fairly satisfactory results to renew, or even extend, the operation next summer. And it relies on communication, with young audiences in particular via influencers, to alert people to the risks of leisure activities at sea. start the search as soon as possible, without waiting for nightfall which makes operations more difficult.