2015 is declared as the Mangrove Year by the CNRS-INEE (www.cnrs.fr) and the IRD (www.ird.fr), two leading French research institutes on natural ecosystems. As a contribution to this initiative, we prepared the directory of persons conducting scientific works on mangroves from French research laboratories, national or local organizations and private agencies. We collated the countries of study and the fields of expertise developed by each person. PhD and post-doctoral students are also included in this database since we consider them as the people of the future. It is our strong belief that sharing the basic data of these specialists constitutes pivotal information for strengthening national and international scientific works dedicated to knowledge acquisition on mangroves ecosystems and coasts. It is the only way we have to claim the necessity of mangrove preservation worldwide. So, we hope that this directory could be linked to others built in other mangrove countries.