Jacques Cousteau

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Jacques-Yves Cousteau has been called the "explorer of the world of silence". He invented SCUBA and pioneered unaided deep sea diving and underwater photography. Jacques Yves Cousteau was born in 1910 and died in 1997.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau had a privileged background because his father was the lawyer for an American billionaire. At 13, he had already developed a passion for amateur film-making. Jacques-Yves also loved the sea and enjoyed sailing and swimming. He attended Naval School, then became an officer in the French navy and also learned to fly. A serious car accident in 1936 forced him to give up his career as a pilot.

Cousteau always wore a red hat.

During World War II, Cousteau concentrated on underwater photography. With his camera fitted inside a glass bowl, he spent his free time filming shipwrecks and the magnificent underwater world of the Mediterranean, in waters then still totally unpolluted. At that time, divers had to wear suits connected to the surface by an air tube. This meant that divers could not be free to explore. Cousteau dreamed of being able to dive freely.

His dreams would soon come true: in 1943, with the help of engineer Emile Gagnan, he designed an underwater breathing apparatus based on compressed air contained inside a cylinder. The invention of the "Aqua-Lung " (SCUBA) made the two men very rich. From then on, Cousteau was able to make dive after dive with the aid of his invention, filming shipwrecks from the war for the French Navy, or ancient wrecks for his own pleasure as amateur archaeologist. In 1947, he reached the record depth of 100 m and suddenly discovered his passion for oceanography.

The Calypso

He managed to find sponsors to help him in his studies of the ocean. A sponsor bought up an old British minesweeper and converted it into an oceanographic vessel. It was called the Calypso. With a team of diving film makers, Jacques-Yves slowly developed the techniques to make underwater movies. This was the first time anyone had done this. These films helped to make him rich and famous.

By now, Cousteau devoted part of each year to underwater exploration around the world. He welcomed on board the Calypso scientists from all fields - geologists, geophysicists, biologists, zoologists, archaeologists, environmentalists - and, each season, explored the Red Sea or the Saint Lawrence, the Antarctic or the Amazon. He produced fifty books, two encyclopaedias, several films and, above all, some one hundred documentaries snapped up by TV stations all over the world.

The public owes most of its knowledge of ocean life to the television programmes of Jacques Cousteau. this is a Japanese poster for The World of Silence (1956), which revealed the treasures of the deep to the entire world. To film and work underwater, Cousteau designed small "diving saucers" and, later, underwater cabins. These could work at a depth of 110 m. Sometimes the "oceanauts" worked at this depth for up to several weeks at a time.

After many years on the oceans, the explorer had become aware of the threat posed by people to marine eco-systems and the Planet as a whole.

In 1960, he campaigned against the dumping of radioactive waste in the Mediterranean and General de Gaulle, then President of the Republic, put an end to the practice. In the United States, in 1974, he set up the Cousteau Society to promote the protection of the Planet and to raise funds. At the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil, in 1992, he launched a petition for the rights of future generations which received more than 5 million signatures. The media nicknamed him "Captain Planet".

He died on June 25, 1997, at the age of 87.

Source: Antoine Trièves Journalist © ministère des Affaires étrangères. Label France.

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