Janosch Labesius, who has just come of age, is the second eldest child of five siblings. He was born in a small village in Lower Saxony. He is currently training to become an environmental protection assistant.
He will take part in an OceanCamp in 2023. When Janosch talks about his weeks at the camp and on the catamaran, his eyes light up – as if he still can’t believe it as he says: “I was so happy. I was really so damn happy. I wasn’t worried about anything.”
A new attitude to life
Janosch himself can hardly believe that he used to be a different person: “A year ago, I wouldn’t even have done this interview. I would have thought a thousand things. And I probably wouldn’t have got into this situation either, because I simply didn’t communicate what my interests were and I would probably have five pieces of paper lying here with answers written on them,” he says with a slight smile.
Today, he seems confident as he talks about wanting to travel with a backpack: “I’d prefer to just pack a tent and off we go. If you really want to take a shower, you can always go to a youth hostel. When you’re young, you don’t have a lot of money. If you want to be on the road for a few months, you just have to think of something.”
When he talks about his time with Okeanos, it becomes clear what has shaped his personal development so much. It was “the coolest thing” that ever happened to him.
The experience at the camp had a huge impact on him. For the first time, he realizes “there are others who have exactly the same interests.” Janosch loves exchanging ideas with others: “Your knowledge is limited. And there might be lots of other cooler things that you don’t even know about, for example.” Janosch reports how he built up a deep trust with strangers after just a few days, as if they had been close friends for years. It was “surreal” for him. Even now, he still talks to his new friends for hours on the phone several times a week.
Formative encounters
Before his time at the camp, Janosch had never swum in the sea. He saw an octopus for the first time on the Vaka off the French Mediterranean coast. He dove in and experienced “how the octopus can change the structure of its skin with different pigments. It looked at me and you could see that this animal is intelligent.” Grinning, he adds: “Then he sprayed me with his ink.”
An encounter with a manta ray was “one of the best moments of my life”, says Janosch. He dove close to the ray and swam in sync with it for a while, the youngster recounts with shining eyes.
He also saw dolphins during his time on the catamaran. Around 200 dolphins swam around the boat and rode on the bow wave, he says. “Actually, the rule is: the number you see on the surface is usually only a third of what’s under the water.”
One of the “best days” of his life was when the group spotted two fin whales in front of the catamaran. Shortly afterwards, more whales suddenly appeared behind the ship – the catamaran was surrounded by around 20 fin whales, while the sunset bathed the surroundings in a warm, golden light, Janosch recounts with shining eyes.
During the night, the youngster was woken up to admire the sea glow caused by jellyfish. As he tries to describe these feelings, he keeps restarting his sentence trying to find the right words: “I was so overwhelmed with excitement, I didn’t know what to do, I felt so good.”
Janosch has had his enthusiasm for animals from an early age: “You can impress me with a whale, but you can also impress me with a mite.” He also had his tenacity: “My parents aren’t that into animals. That’s why I never had any big pets. I really tried every animal, not dogs or cats, but snakes, tortoises and chameleons.” From an early age, he was nagging his parents. Today he has ants. He also knows the Latin terms for them, they have become normal for him. He now finds it amusing when he encounters surprised looks around him, he says.
Plans for the future
After his apprenticeship, Janosch wants to study marine biology. He also plans to become a research diver – he needs variety in his job, he explains. Diving is also a hobby that he loves.
Janosch also wants to do something for nature – in understandable language. He set his mind to making specialist knowledge easier to understand using simple language. In his opinion, this was also a problem during Corona, that “some scientists were pulled out of the cellars and then supposed to explain the virus to the masses”, he points out.
But above all, he says, he learned during his time at sea that it doesn’t matter what others think: “If I see someone on the street and think something about them, I’ve already forgotten it two minutes later. I am perhaps a fraction of a percent of their life.”
