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Jacques-Yves Cousteau

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Jacques-Yves Cousteau in 1976.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, photographer and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française.

Cousteau was born in Saint André de Cubzac, France to Daniel and Elizabeth Cousteau on June 11, 1910 and died on June 25, 1997 in Paris, France. He is generally known in France as le commandant Cousteau ("Commander Cousteau"). Worldwide, he was commonly known as Jacques Cousteau or Captain Cousteau.

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[edit] Personal history

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France to Daniel Cousteau (a lawyer) and Elizabeth Cousteau.

He died on 25 June 1997 age 87 of a heart attack while recovering from a respiratory illness. He is buried in the Cousteau family plot at Saint-André-de-Cubzac Cemetery, Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France.

[edit] Early life

In 1930, Cousteau was admitted to the École Navale (Naval Academy) in Brest and became a gunnery officer of the French Navy, which gave him the opportunity to make his first underwater experiments. He was training to become a pilot, but a serious car accident ended his aviation career. In 1936 he tested a model of underwater goggles, perhaps the ancestors of modern diving masks.

In 1937 he married Simone Melchior, and had two children named Jean-Michel and Phillipe. He took part in World War II, and during the conflict he found the time to be co-inventor, with Emile Gagnan, of the first commercially successful open circuit type of Scuba diving equipment, the aqua-lung in 1943<ref>"Year by Year 1943" -- History Channel International</ref>. Among the things that prompted him to develop efficient air-breathing free-swimming diving gear, were two oxygen toxicity accidents that he had earlier with rebreathers.

After WWII, while still a naval officer, he developed techniques (including forming an unofficial clearance diver unit using his taccos) for minesweeping of France's harbors. He also explored shipwrecks.

In August of 1946, Cousteau and fellow diver Frederic Dumas explored one of the deepest known underground rivers, the Sorgue, at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in Provence, France. During this expedition both divers nearly died<ref>http://www.secret-bottletop.com/diving/Script2/p03.html</ref> as carbon-monoxide had accidentally been sucked into their air intake from a diesel-powered air compressor used to fill their aqua-lung, which they had recently pioneered. When the divers became lethargic and disoriented at a depth of 150 feet (46 meters) below surface, both divers helped each other get back to the mouth of the cave. Ironically, another set of divers immediately entered the water after Cousteau and Dumas had been rescued, nearly succumbing to the same problem. Cousteau would return with his crew to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in 1967 and his robotic Télénaute<ref>http://www.oti-delasorgue.fr/in-english/fontaine-de-vaucluse.php</ref>, a remote-control mini submarine guided by a tethered cord, to continue the quest to find the origin of the river. Cousteau guided the Télénaute to a depth of 347 feet (106 meters) before reaching an impass.

Subsequently, Cousteau made an underwater film called Épaves (Shipwrecks). While planning to make it, he found that under postwar shortages, unexposed movie film was impossible to buy, so his wife had to make movie reels by gluing together end-to-end dozens of small short unexposed film reels intended for children's toy cameras. Showing this film proved vital in persuading the French Navy to make official his unofficial diving capsule.

[edit] Exploration on the Calypso

In 1950, shortly after Cousteau's 40th birthday, Loel Guinness (who was named the president of the French Oceanographic Campaigns) bought the ex-Royal Navy minesweeper Calypso when it was doing service as a ferry between Malta and Gozo. Guinness leased it to Cousteau for a symbolic one franc a year.

In the Calypso Cousteau visited the most interesting waters of the planet, including some rivers. During these trips he produced many books and films. Cousteau won three Oscars for The Silent World (1956), The Golden Fish, and World Without Sun (1964), as well as many other top awards including the Palme d'Or in 1956 at the Cannes Film Festival. His work did a great deal to popularize knowledge of underwater biology and was featured in the long-lived documentary television series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau which began in 1968.

In the mid-1950s, Cousteau had worked with Luis Marden aboard the Calypso, in which they pioneered new techniques in underwater photography. In 1963, along with Jean de Wouters, Cousteau developed the underwater camera named "Calypso-Phot" which was later licensed to Nikon and became the "Calypso-Nikkor" and then the Nikonos. Together with Jean Mollard, he created the SP-350, a two-man submarine that could reach a depth of 350 m below the ocean's surface. The successful experiment was soon repeated in 1965 with two submarines that reached 500 m depth.

In 1957, Cousteau was made director of the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, created the Underseas Research Group in Toulon, was the leader of the Conshelf Saturation Dive Program (long-term immersion experiments, the first manned undersea colonies) and was one of the few foreigners who has been admitted to the American Academy of Sciences.

[edit] Marine conservation

Cousteau's popularity was increasing. In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the sea by EURATOM. Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway, and it was sent back to its origin. The risk was avoided. During this, a French government man had said falsely to a newspaper that Cousteau had approved the dump; Cousteau managed to get the newspaper to issue a correction.[citation needed]

In November 1960 in Monaco an official visit by the French president Charles de Gaulle turned into a debate on the events of October 1960 and on nuclear experiments in general. The French ambassador already had suggested that Prince Rainier avoid the subject, but the president allegedly asked Cousteau in a friendly manner to be kind toward nuclear researchers, to which Cousteau allegedly replied: "No sir, it is your researchers that ought to be kind toward us."

In 1973, along with his two sons, and Frederick Hyman who was the first President, he created the Cousteau Society for the protection of ocean life; it now has more than 300,000 members.

In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN international environment prize.

In 1985 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.

In 1992 he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations' international conference on environment and development, and then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.

[edit] Legacy

Cousteau liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician". He was, in reality, a sophisticated lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the "blue continent".

His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticised at the time by some academics. The so-called divulgationisme, a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern TV broadcasting.

In 1975, folk singer John Denver composed the song "Calypso" as a tribute to Cousteau and his research ship Calypso. The song reached the number one position on the Billboard 100 charts.

In his last years, after marrying again, Cousteau became involved in a legal battle with his son Jean-Michel over the use of the Cousteau name, resulting in Jean-Michel Cousteau being ordered by the court not to encourage confusion between his for-profit business and his father's non-profit endeavours. On January 11, 1996, the Calypso sank in Singapore harbour. Cousteau died on June 25, 1997. The Cousteau Society and its French counterpart Equipe Cousteau, which Jacques-Yves Cousteau founded, are still active today.

[edit] Pop Culture References

The 1998 Wes Anderson movie, Rushmore, written by Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson, contains a quote by Jacques-Yves, "When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself."

The 2004 film, also by Wes Anderson, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is regarded as both an homage and send-up of Cousteau's career. There are also several humorous references made in episodes of the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants, usually in the beginning of the episode.

In an episode of the popular TV series Friends one of the characters, Phoebe, has a dream about Jacques Cousteau and later yells out, "I love Jacques Cousteau!"

The Shock Rock band GWAR have a song entitled " Je M'appelle J.cousteau".

The Belgian punk rocker Plastic Bertrand released a single entitled "Jacques Cousteau" in 1981.

In the Wu-Tang Clan song "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'," the Ol' Dirty Bastard posits of his deep type flow that Jacques Cousteau could never get that low.

In The Tragically Hip's song "Twist my arm", his name in mentionned in the first sentence of the lyrics (There she blows, Jacques Cousteau...).

The Blue Öyster Cult song "Perfect Water" has the following lyric: "Do you know Jacques Cousteau? Well, they said on the radio that he hears bells in random order deep beneath the perfect water"

In an episode of Pinky and the Brain Cousteau is mimicked by Brain who does an homage to one of Cousteau's famous lines "Here we see the oceans teeming with life...".

The alternative/rock band Incubus includes a lyric in their song "Nice to Know You" which says, "Deeper than the deepest Cousteau would ever go."

In William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, a character tells: "Jacques Cousteau said that jet lag was his favourite drug."

Andrew Bird refers to Cousteau in his song "Lull" singing as his first lines "being alone can be quite romantic, like Jacques Cousteau underneath the atlantic..."

[edit] Tributes

Two New Age composers, Vangelis (who was heavily involved with Cousteau in the 1990s) and Jean Michel Jarre, released two albums including original numbers honoring Jacques-Yves Cousteau, titled Cousteau's Dreams (2000) and En Attendant Cousteau (1990), respectively.

The John Denver song "Calypso" is a tribute to Cousteau. It was first released on the album Windsong in 1975.

American poet Adrienne Rich refers in her poem "Diving into the Wreck" to Cousteau and his "assiduos team" published in 1973

[edit] References

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[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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