Cousteau Obit
Cousteau's 60-year odyssey with the sea -- much of it on his famous boat the Calypso -- was more than a great adventure. He co-invented the aqualung, developed a one-person, jet-propelled submarine and helped start the first manned undersea colonies.
The life of Jacques Cousteau
"When you dive, you begin to feel that you're an angel," the environmentalist and scuba pioneer once said.
But the bespectacled, wiry Cousteau, often wearing his trademark red wool cap, became a household name primarily through his hugely popular television series, "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau," and his many documentaries...
Ted Turner, vice chairman of Time Warner, which owns CNN said, "I
think Captain Cousteau might be the father of the environmental
movement."
Read more:
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9706/25/cousteau.obit/
Biography
In collaboration with engineer Jean Mollard, Captain Cousteau designed the Diving Saucer in 1959, a highly maneuverable, two-person submersible capable of diving to a depth of 1,000 feet. In 1965, twin one-man submersibles, the Sea Fleas, were launched. Captain Cousteau also directed three experiments in saturation diving: Conshelf I (1962), Conshelf II (1963), and Conshelf III (1965), in which six men lived and worked at 300 feet for three weeks. Captain Cousteau, Professor Lucien Malavard and Bertrand Charrier developed the Turbosailtm wind-propulsion system in 1982. The system was refined for the experimental ship Alcyone, now a proven expedition and filming platform.
Jacques Cousteau produced more than 115 films, which have won numerous Emmys and other awards, including three full-length theatrical feature films: The Silent World (Oscar and Palme d'Or), World Without Sun (Oscar and Grand Prix du Cinéma Français pour la Jeunesse) and Voyage to the Edge of the World. Captain Cousteau wrote, in collaboration with various co-authors, more than 100 books, published in more than a dozen languages. Books in English include Jacques Cousteau's Amazon Journey (1984), and Jacques Cousteau / Whales (1988); in French, Les Iles du Pacifique(1990), L'Ile des esprits (1995), Le Monde des Dauphins (1995) and the posthumously published L'homme, le pieuvre et l'orchidée.
Read more:
http://www.cousteausociety.org/tcs_people.html
E Magazine
Interview
E: You were saying in 1976 that the world's oceans were in their "death throes."
No, I never used that word. I said that the oceans were sick but they're not going to die. There is no death possible in the oceans--there will always be life--but they're getting sicker every year. On land, over one million species, eight percent of all the species ever counted, have gone extinct in the last two centuries. It's a serious disaster. But in the sea, the species that have disappeared are counted on the fingers of the hands. Why? Because it is not the same problem. Take for example the herrings of the North Sea. They were considered wiped out by overfishing four years ago. Now the fishing has stopped for a couple of years and now there are more herring than ever before. Why? Because in the sea marine mammals lay hundreds of thousands of eggs every year, like insects. The repopulation is extremely quick. It is almost impossible to exterminate a species in the sea without leaving at least two of them to reproduce.
On land if you wanted to eliminate the elephants, it could easily be done.
If you wanted to eliminate rhinos, well, it's even easier. Why? Because
they have just one birth every year--if everything goes well--instead of
the millions that insects and fish have. So to speak of death in the sea
is nonsense. But the sea is vastly overfished and polluted, mismanaged on
the coastlines, all this is true. But it's not dead and it won't die.
Read more:
http://www.ecomall.com/activism/emag.htm
My
Travels With Jacques Cousteau: The First Expedtion
About the time I was 10 years old, an astronaut named Scott Carpenter
became involved in ocean exploration. All of the astronauts trained in the
ocean anyway because it simulated zero-gravity conditions but Carpenter
took it a bit further. The light bulb went off in my head: if an astronaut
could become an oceanographer, then an oceanographer could become an
astronaut! And so, at the age of ten, I announced that I was going to be
an oceanographer.
By that time I was already
completely in love with that French man in the red cap aboard that really
cool boat with the funny front end and all those scuba guys in space-age
wetsuits diving in every place I ever wanted to go. The Undersea World
of Jacques Cousteau was a legend with me and Jacques Cousteau was my
hero (along with John Glenn and Pablo Casals, who filled the #2 and #3
hero spots). I never missed a show and every time I heard that theme music
I felt chills up my spine.
The thrill of those early
shows and the absolute reverence I held for the sea as a result never left
me. The oceans were the new frontier and I wanted to be a part of it.
There was never any doubt in my mind from that moment at ten years old
that I would get a PhD in oceanography and become a famous oceanographer.
And if somehow, someday, I could make it aboard Calypso, well, then I
really must have died and gone to heaven.
Read more:
http://www.oceansonline.com/cousteau.htm
The
Last Word
"From birth man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to the earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free. Buoyed by water, we can fly in any direction--up, down, sideways--by merely flipping his hand. Underwater, man becomes an archangel.”
-Jaques
Cousteau
National Geographic
"Surface! Surface! Surface!"
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