Anita Conti

Trawlers / Les chalutiers Viking Spitzberg et Bois Rosé, 1939-1952

biography

Portraits of Anita Conti / Portraits d'Anita Conti

Anita Caracotchian was born in Ermont in the Val d’Oise, in 1899. At the dawn of the First World War, in 1914, the family took refuge on the island of Oleron where the young girl devoted herself to sailing, reading and taking her first photographs. In 1920, she started her career as an art bookbinder and married Marcel Conti in 1927. But her passion was the sea. Between the two world wars, Anita Conti began to draw up the first fishing maps when only navigation charts were available. Her scientific activity contributed to the rationalization of deep-sea fishing practices. In the 1940s, she became concerned about the effects of industrial fishing on the sea’s resources. Through her books (Racleurs d’océans, 1953 and Géants des mers chaudes, 1957), her conferences, her numerous writings and some forty thousand photographs, she described the conditions of fishing and warned very early on about the risks linked to overfishing, well before we became aware of it. In the 1960s, she turned to aquaculture while continuing to embark on trawlers, like the Charcot in 1974. She continued her research tirelessly until she was over 88 years old. She died in 1997 in Douarnenez.
The Anita Conti collection is kept at the Archives of Lorient and distributed by the VU’ agency. Laurent Girault-Conti, her adopted son, continues to keep alive the memory of this pioneer.

Series

La Dame de la Mer, 1998

Series | Writer, photographer and first woman oceanographer, she made her mark in the very male world of fishing...

Les Terre Neuvas, 1952

Serie | The photographs of Anita Conti, the only woman to have accompanied the legendary terre-neuvas in 1939 and 1952, tell the story of this great fishery, which has totally disappeared today.

Anita Conti séries

La Dame de la Mer, 1998

Series | Writer, photographer and first woman oceanographer, she made her mark in the very male world of fishing...

Anita Conti séries

Les Terre Neuvas, 1952

Serie | The photographs of Anita Conti, the only woman to have accompanied the legendary terre-neuvas in 1939 and 1952, tell the story of this great fishery, which has totally disappeared today.

Anita Conti séries

La Dame de la Mer, 1998

Series | Writer, photographer and first woman oceanographer, she made her mark in the very male world of fishing...

Anita Conti séries

Les Terre Neuvas, 1952

Serie | The photographs of Anita Conti, the only woman to have accompanied the legendary terre-neuvas in 1939 and 1952, tell the story of this great fishery, which has totally disappeared today.

movie

Racleurs d’océans
Anita Conti
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From July to December 1952, Anita Conti went with 60 men to the banks of Newfoundland to observe and witness the “great profession” of cod fishing. She was asked by the Central Office of Scientific Fisheries to draw up fishing maps and to study the salinity of the sea. Upon her return, she published her first book “Racleurs d’Océans” (Viking Award 1954).

Through this film, she pays tribute to the work of these men, these “convicts of the sea” and gives an account of their place through the vision of a free woman with a gaze filled with humility. The man or “the other” is not anonymous because she knows the name and function of each person on board. The value of this film lies in the fact that it bears witness to a moment in time of a vanished profession that Anita Conti approaches through various ethnographic testimonies of scientific, historical, technical and artistic value.

Anita Conti is the only woman to have witnessed cod fishing in Newfoundland.
—
Date: 1952

Media : Cinémathèque de Bretagne

Type of media : Documentary film

Images : Anita Conti

Duration : 20 minutes

Interviews

Anita Conti, pionnière de l’océanographie
France Culture
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Interview by Derwell Queffelec, 2020

A pioneer in oceanography, the first woman to embark on a scientific vessel, an ecologist before her time, Anita Conti was ahead of her time in the 1930s. The woman who was nicknamed the Lady of the Sea dedicated her life to the ocean. Here is her story told through archives, photos and by her adopted son.

Books