The operas he prefers are those of nature. A funny music theory made of cries, hisses and songs. A militant music lover, Michel André has had a passion for thirty years for bioacoustics, this science which studies the sounds produced by animals but also by human activities: maritime transport, deep-sea drilling, deforestation… With his foundation The Sense of Silence and his laboratory in Catalonia, he analyzes recordings made all over the world. And fights, in the name of biodiversity, so that men put the mute.
His laboratory is set up facing the sea. It is here, within the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, 50 kilometers south of Barcelona, that Michel André created, with the support of the Spanish government, his Lab, the Laboratoire bioacoustic applications. At the entrance, he suspended a mandible of a whale, 5 meters and 300 kilos, brought back by a fisherman in his nets. On the first floor, the 57-year-old researcher shows us the acoustic calibration tunnel, a huge suspended basin of 144,000 liters. He and his fifteen collaborators carry out tests there. “We tinker”, he slips, showing a workbench, on which are arranged dozens of rolls of colored cables and all kinds of objects. Michel André has developed revolutionary acoustic tools to detect and save endangered species.
His team’s latest creations: a buoy intended to be placed under the ice floe, boxes that he is trying to make ever more compact before installing them in the heart of the Amazon, a titanium antenna with microphone, battery and data collection, which can collect sounds up to 6,000 meters deep at sea. Michel André is a pioneer. Then asks him to watch her, he spends fifteen days and fifteen nights at the bedside of the animal which regains a taste for life. This episode will allow him to access the existence he dreams of. Michel André works with Diana Reiss for six months. He will return there for several years to train in bioacoustics, this multidisciplinary field which studies the emission, reception and interpretation of sounds emitted by animals. The opportunity to realize how much the sea is “polluted” by the noise of men…
His daughters, Manon and Charlotte, follow in his footsteps
Michel André deconstructs the myth of the world of silence. In 1992, he was called by the government of the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of Morocco, to reflect on the problem of accidents between fast ferries with sperm whales. He stayed there for six years, the time to finish his thesis on the bioacoustics of this cetacean. The Rolex Prize for Entrepreneurship was awarded to him in 2002, for the development of an alert system which makes it possible to avoid human collisions with the giant of the seas. He won a scholarship of 100,000 euros, global media exposure and a network. In the André family, we know that childhood dreams can come true. Ruth, Michel’s wife, a former lawyer specializing in the environment, has become an actress, their two daughters Manon and Charlotte, follow in the father’s footsteps. The first has just settled in Haute-Savoie to contribute to the ecological transition, the second collaborates in the communication of the foundation, The Sense of Silence. They have never forgotten the expedition on the Amazon where their father, this born pedagogue, took them in search of pink dolphins.
To consult:Our special page dedicated to “Heroes of the Planet”
Development of industries at sea, felling of trees, disappearance of species… Michel André continues to alert governments, NGOs and public opinion. When it comes to his fights, he is inexhaustible. Nature is not mute, he reminds us, but “humans have lost the ability to listen to the messages it transmits to us”. He spent thirty years listening to the world. Now it’s up to the world to listen to him.
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