#CLIMATECHANGE- #JacquesCousteau -son of France- hero of the world- now am an elder and this incredible purveyor of preserving nature and the underwater glory blessed upon us... was my hero of heroes - Jacques-Yves Cousteau/ #ParisAgreement /#EARTHDAY2016
SAINT-ANDRÉ-DE-CUBZAC, WHERE THE JACQUES COUSTEAU STORY STARTED… AND FINISHED
Yes, this is a wooden dolphin, and in its beak (sorry, its rostrum) the dolphin is holding a red hat reminiscent of the knit cap famously worn by the underwater explorer and filmmaker Jacques(-Yves) Cousteau. And the wooden dolphin is to be found in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, the town to the north of Bordeaux where Commandant Cousteau was born in 1910 and buried in 1997.
His birthplace, celebrated by a plaque, was a room above thepharmacie ran by his maternal grandfather Ronan Duranthon, from a long line of illustrious local land-owners and wine-growers. Cousteau’s father, Daniel, was from a similarly wealthy background and was heir to the legacy of a merchant-shipping dynasty. He had become a reputable lawyer who had followed in the footsteps of his own father, anotaire. After graduating from Law School in Paris, Daniel returned to Saint-André where he practiced for three years.
The plaque on the wall of Cousteau's birthplace in Saint-André.
Around this time Daniel met Élisabeth Duranthon, twelve years his junior, and in 1906 the 30-year-old lawyer and his 18-year-old bride moved to Paris. From then on, they would only really return to their hometown for weddings and funerals… and for the birth of Jacques-Yves, their second son after Pierre-Antoine who was born in 1906. By then the Cousteaus’ life was already on the road. Although they had an apartment in Paris, they were rarely there and this would partly explain why Élisabeth wanted the birth of their second child to be in a more homely family environment.
The Cousteaus’ itinerant lifestyle was largely due to Daniel’s new full-time position as legal advisor and private secretary to the wealthy American expatriate James Hazen Hyde, who enjoyed a lavish few years in France until the First World War broke out. Hyde then released Cousteau and the family momentarily moved back to Saint-André.
The dolphin on the roundabout near the cemetery where Cousteau is buried.
After 1918, with a fresh influx of rich Americans relocating to Europe, Daniel Cousteau met Eugene Higgins, heir to the fortunes amassed by a carpet manufacturer. Higgins hired Daniel as his factotum, and the Cousteau family followed Higgins as he navigated between Paris and New York, which they went on to call home for two years. It was Higgins who encouraged the shy and reserved Jacques-Yves to learn to swim. It also happened to be on an eight-day transatlantic voyage that Jacques-Yves came out of his shell – he was in his element aboard the liner and the world's oceans were to become his territory.
In the 1920s, the family finally settled for good in Marseille, where the teenager began exploring the rocky Mediterranean Calanques. The incredible story from then on of the man known internationally as Jacques Cousteau is recounted in great detail on numerous specialist pages, but I’ll do my best to squeeze as much as possible into the following concise bullet points, all of which have been stolen from various online sources:
As a student at the French naval academy, his class embarked on a one-year world cruise, which he documented, filming everything and everyone.
Cousteau wanted to become a pilot but was seriously injured in a car crash aged 25. To recover the use of his arm he underwent a rigorous swimming programme in the Mediterranean.
Aged 27 he married the 18-year-old Simone Melchior who would have a profound influence throughout the rest of his life.
In 1943 he co-invented an underwater breathing apparatus, the Aqua-lung, for which scuba divers the world remain thankful to this day.
Cousteau then went on to become the most famous undersea explorer in the world, producing dozens of books and films from the 1950s onwards.
It is said that for many years Jacques Cousteau was the world's most famous Frenchman, well ahead of other contenders such as Charles de Gaulle and Marcel Marceau.
Cousteau dedicated the latter years of his life to educating the public on environmental issues, and working with the Cousteau Foundation, founded in 1973 to further marine research and exploration.
Cousteau died aged 87 in 1997 at his home in Paris. The cause of death was a heart attack after a period spent suffering from a respiratory ailment. And the man who had become a global citizen and who had sailed the seven seas was set to return to the place where he was born; he was buried in the Cousteau family vault back in Saint-André-de-Cubzac.
The Cousteau family vault.
How then is Cousteau remembered throughout the town? The street that runs opposite Cousteau’s birthplace has been given his name. The dolphin piece on the roundabout which is located near to the cemetery was the work of the Chile-based French sculptor Lucien Burquier (also known as Polyte Solet) and was given to the town in 1998 by the Chilean city of Caldera, where Cousteau had filmed his final documentary. (The dolphin symbol is particularly apt as the animal features on Saint-André-de-Cubzac’s coat of arms.) Finally, Saint-André’s high school is known as Lycée Cousteau, but technically bears the name of Philippe Cousteau, Jacques-Yves’s second son, who died in a seaplane accident in 1979.
Cousteau’s influence is possibly more tangible still on the global stage, with notable examples including Wes Anderson’s 2004 movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, starring Bill Murray sporting a Cousteauesque red hat, and the music he inspired such as Calypsoby John Denver, Jean-Michel Jarre's scary Waiting for Cousteau and, a-hem, Jacques Cousteau by Belgium’s Plastic Bertrand. This is how it went:
1910–97). “Sooner or later man will live underwater and work there.” So
predicted Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the French ocean explorer and pioneer in
underwater research. With his passionate love for the ocean and his
groundbreaking films, Jacques Cousteau helped reveal to the world the hidden
universe under the sea.
Cousteau was born in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France, on
June 11, 1910, to Daniel Cousteau, a legal adviser and companion to American
millionaire Eugene Higgins, and Elizabeth, a homemaker. He was born in the
market town of Sainte-André-de-Cubzac near Bordeaux. Because of the nature of
Daniel's work, the family traveled extensively. The moving was difficult for
Cousteau, a sickly boy who suffered both from acute enteritis, an inflammation
of the intestines, and anemia. Nevertheless, he learned to swim when he was only
4 at the resort of Deauville, where Higgins docked his yacht. As Cousteau would
write later, “I loved touching water. Physically. Sensually.” As Cousteau got
older, his illnesses began to subside, and he gradually became a strong swimmer.
In 1920, the family traveled with Higgins to live in New York City for two
years. It was in America that Cousteau first learned to dive under water, in
Lake Harvey in Vermont where he and his brother attended summer camp.
Once the family returned to France, Cousteau saved his
money and bought his first movie camera. His first mission involving the camera
was to take it apart and put it back together. By the age 13, he and his friends
were staging and filming melodramas, with J. Cousteau always listed as producer,
director, and chief cameraman. In spite of Cousteau's natural curiosity, he was
a poor student, and his parents sent him to a strict boarding school in Alsace,
near the French-German border. His parents' plan to keep Cousteau focused on
academic pursuits worked, and Jacques graduated in 1930, after which he entered
the Brest Naval Academy.
Once in the naval academy, Cousteau chose to enroll in
the Navy's aviation school. Before he was to take his pilot's exam, he was
involved in a serious car accident in which he drove his father's car off a
mountain road, breaking both his arms. Because of an infection in one of his
arms his doctors wanted to amputate, but Cousteau vehemently refused. After
months of intense physical therapy, Cousteau was able to use both his arms, but
it was the end of his flying career. Ironically, this accident probably saved
his life, as all but one of his classmates at the aviation school lost their
lives in World War II.
Sent to a naval base at Toulon, Cousteau began swimming
in the Mediterranean every day to strengthen his arms. He and two other naval
officers began to experiment with swimming underwater with goggles. The world
that was opened to Cousteau changed his life, and in 1936, he began his lifelong
obsession with undersea exploration. This was also the year he met his wife,
Simone Melchior, in Paris. They married the following summer, and later had two
sons, Philippe and Jean-Michel.
The beginning of World War II did not sway Cousteau from
his underwater explorations. While still in the Navy and serving as a spy for
the French Resistance, Jacques and his colleagues began experimenting with
hoses, body suits, and breathing devices. They wanted to create an apparatus
that would allow them to dive deeper and move freely about the water, to act as
a “manfish,” as Cousteau said. He eventually met engineer Émile Gagnan, and
together they created the first scuba—or self-contained underwater breathing
apparatus—diving device, which they called the Aqua-lung. The Aqua-lung, which
could feed air to the diver at the same pressure as the water, was first tested
in 1943, and it was available commercially by 1946. For the first time divers
were able to swim beneath the sea without being attached to an air hose
connected to a source on the surface.
Cousteau went on permanent leave from the Navy in 1950
and converted a minesweeper ship to travel about the seas. The ship was
christened the Calypso. Aboard the Calypso, he and his crew, which
included his wife and longtime friend and colleague Frédéric Dumas, began
exploring the world's oceans and experimenting with new underwater technology.
In 1953, Cousteau published a book, The Silent World, which was first
written in English and later rewritten in French. It was translated into many
languages and brought Cousteau into the public eye. One of the first to develop
underwater color photography, Cousteau invented a process for using television
underwater, and he began to film his journeys under the sea. His films The
Silent World, released in 1956, and The Golden Fish, released in
1959, won Academy Awards.
In the 1960s, Cousteau began a project to prove that
humans could live beneath the water in pressurized habitats on the ocean floor.
The projects were named Conshelf I, II, and III. Although detractors questioned
the authenticity of the footage, the documentary World Without Sun, about
Conshelf II, won an Academy Award in 1964. A film about Conshelf III could not
find theatrical distribution, so the footage shot became a National Geographic
special, which led to a contract with the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) to
provide documentaries for television specials. The Emmy Award-winning television
series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau premiered in 1968 and
lasted for nine years. Cousteau later made documentaries for the Public
Broadcasting System and Ted Turner's cable network. By the 1970s Cousteau began
to focus on environmental issues, particularly marine conservation. He began the
Cousteau Society in 1974, which was dedicated to saving the world's oceans,
ignoring accusations from environmentalists that he often abused sea animals to
shoot his documentaries.
Cousteau's later years were marked by tragedies, both
personal and professional. His son Philippe, who was most involved with his
father's work and was considered his successor, was killed in a plane crash in
1979. The responsibility to carry on his father's work fell on the shoulders of
Cousteau's older son, Jean-Michel, but due to constant disagreements between
father and son, Jean-Michel retired from the Cousteau Society in 1992. In 1990,
Cousteau's wife died, and in 1996 the Calypso was hit by a barge and
sank. Nevertheless, Cousteau was striving to continue his work, attempting to
raise money to build a Calypso II, when he died on June 25, 1997, at the
age of 87.
Additional references about Jacques Cousteau
Cousteau, Jacques-Yves, and the Staff of the Cousteau Society. The
Cousteau Almanac: An Inventory of Life on Our Water Planet (Doubleday,
1981).
Cousteau, Jacques-Yves. The Silent World (N. Lyons, 1987).
Madsen, Axel. Cousteau: An Unauthorized Biography (Curley,
1988).
Markham, Lois. Jacques-Yves Cousteau: Exploring the Wonders of the Deep
(Raintree, 1996).
Munson, Richard. Cousteau: The Captain and His World (Morrow,
1989).
Reef, Catherine, and Raymond, Larry. Jacques Cousteau: Champion of the
Sea (Twenty First Century Books, 1992).
CLIMATE CHANGE: Pope Francis sidestepped the Vatican Tribe
and made sure our Climate Change caring by billions of Catholics and Christians
were presented for all the world to see – our children and future need this so
much.... many years as Sunday school teacher ... and the environment was
integral to our Christianity – nothing’s changed....
Fiat Lux lights up St. Peter's Basilica,
December 8, 2015 (manortiz)
If there is one person who single-handedly fascinated millions of landlocked viewers to venture underwater into the unknown, through television, it is the Frenchman Jacques Cousteau. Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born on June 11, 1910, in the town of St.-Andre-de-Cubzac near Bordeaux, in France, to Daniel and Elizabeth Cousteau.
As a child, Jacques was quite sickly but he nonetheless learned to swim at the age of four. His initial dip led to his everlasting love for the sea.
He was also very curious about machines. At the age of 13, Cousteau saved his pocket money to buy a movie camera. The first thing he did was to take it apart to see how it worked! He shot films around the house and credited it with “J Cousteau” director and chief cameraman.
Despite his curiosity, Cousteau was not very interested in school. He was soon expelled from school for breaking one of the windows. As a result Cousteau was sent to a boarding school in Alsace.
In 1930, he gained entry to the Ecole Navale (Naval Academy) at Brest. Cousteau joined the French Navy as a gunnery officer. He took his camera along and shot roll after roll of exotic films. It was in one of his trips near Polynesia that he saw South Sea pearl divers wearing a kind of goggles when they dived under water to search for oysters.
In 1933, he suffered a major car accident that nearly cost him his life. Cousteau began swimming daily in the Mediterranean to regain his health. Here he experimented with watertight goggles, so he could see underwater.
Cousteau married Simone Melchior in 1937 and they had two sons, Jean-Michel and Phillipe. Cousteau and his friends were determined to dive deeper and capture what they saw on camera.
The compressed air cylinder had just been invented and this helped Cousteau to experiment with various items like snorkel hoses, body suits, and breathing apparatus to stay underwater. He even fashioned a waterproof cover for the camera.
During World War II, when Paris fell to Hitler’s Nazis, Cousteau joined the French Resistance movement, spying on the armed forces of Hitler’s ally, Italy. For his efforts, the French government later awarded him several medals including the Legion d’Honneur, the highest honour given to a cilvilian.
During the war, Cousteau continued to search for a breathing apparatus to stay for long periods under water. In 1943, he met Emile Gagnan, a French engineer and the two perfected a machine, which they called the “aqua lung”.
The aqualung allowed a diver to stay underwater for several hours. In June 1943, Cousteau tested his aqualung by diving down to 60 ft. With the invention of the aqualung, scuba diving came into being. (Scuba is an acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.)
In 1948, he became president of the French oceanographic campaigns and in 1950 purchased a ship, the Calypso, to further his explorations. To finance his trips he tried to get government grants but soon realised that he first had to attract media attention to get money.
Cousteau first wrote ‘The Silent World’ in 1953 on the development of scuba diving. The book made him an instant celebrity. In 1955, he left on a voyage to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean that was sponsored by the French government and National Geographic. Simultaneously he shot numerous films.
For the documentary film ‘The Silent World’ shot in 1956, Cousteau shot a spectacular sequence of sharks feeding for which he won an Academy Award.
Having attracted public attention, Cousteau needed a base to work from. In 1956, he retired from the French navy as a Captain and became director of the Oceanographic Institute at Monaco.
For long, Cousteau wanted to show that people could live and work on the ocean floor. He set out to prove this with three expeditions, called Conshelf I, II and III. Cameras captured every moment of these “oceanauts” and the resulting film ‘World Without Sun’ in 1966 won an Academy Award.
In 1968, Cousteau was asked to make a TV serial. Initially meant as a four part series, it continued for the next nine years. Titled ‘The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau’, millions followed Cousteau as he zigzagged across the globe. People came face to face with sharks, whales, dolphins, sunken treasure, coral reefs in their living rooms.
Between filming and his many trips Cousteau wrote various books: ‘The Living Sea’ in 1963; ‘Dolphins’ in 1975; and ‘Jacques Cousteau: The Ocean World in 1985’. During his expeditions, Cousteau realised that man was polluting the oceans considerably.
In 1974, Cousteau started the Cousteau Society to conserve ocean life. The organisation grew to include over 300,000 members worldwide. In 1985, Cousteau was awarded the Medal of Freedom by US President Reagan.
On January 11, 1996 the Calypso hit a barge and sank in Singapore harbour. He tried to raise money to build a new vessel to be called the Calypso II. However, Cousteau died on June 25, 1997, but not without ridding people’s fear of the unknown under the sea.
With Rod Serling, Jacques-Yves
Cousteau, Joseph Campanella, Frédéric Dumas. The aquatic
explorations of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the crew of the
Calypso.
----------------
Jacques Cousteau Biography
Born: June 11, 1910 Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France Died: June 25, 1997 Paris, France French oceanographer, inventor, photographer, explorer, and environmentalist
Jacques Cousteau was an undersea explorer, a photographer, an inventor of diving devices, and a writer. Most important was his work that he produced and wrote for television, which enlightened audiences around the world on the subjects of the ocean's natural treasures and the effects of pollution.
Early life and inspiration
Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born June 11, 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France, to Daniel and Elizabeth Cousteau. After their son's birth, the Cousteaus returned to Paris, France, where Daniel worked as a lawyer. Although Cousteau was a sickly child, who the doctors told not to participate in any strenuous activity, he learned to swim and soon developed a passionate love for the sea. He combined this love with an early interest in invention and built a model of a marine crane when he was eleven years old.
In school Cousteau was bored and often misbehaved. He was even expelled at one time. In 1930 Cousteau entered France's naval academy, the Ecole Navale, in Brest. He graduated three years later and then entered the French navy. In 1936 he was given a pair of underwater goggles, the kind used by divers. Cousteau was so impressed with what he saw beneath the sea that he immediately set about designing a device that would allow humans to breath underwater.
This project was put on hold during World War II (1939–45; a war in which England, the Soviet Union, and the United States clashed with Germany, Japan, and Italy). Cousteau became a gunnery (heavy guns) officer and was later awarded the prestigious Legion d'Honneur for his work with the
Jacques Cousteau. Reproduced by permission of
AP/Wide World Photos
.
French resistance, a military group fighting against the occupying German army.
Even during the war Cousteau turned his attention to the world below the sea. In 1942 he designed the Aqua-Lung, an early underwater breathing device. Cousteau then helped remove mines from French seas left over from the war. One of these minesweepers (boats used to remove mines from the bottom of the ocean) would become Cousteau's research ship, the Calypso.
Work aboard the Calypso
On the Calypso 's first research voyage to the Red Sea, the maritime (having to do with sea travel) and diving expertise of her crew was combined with the scientific expertise of academic scientists who came aboard. These expeditions advanced knowledge of the deep by gathering underwater flora (plants) and fauna (animals) and by extensively photographing the underwater world, which is more vast than the surface above water.
When the French Ministry of Education finally provided grants to cover two-thirds of the expenses, Cousteau resigned from the navy in 1957, with the rank of lieutenant commander, to become director of the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco.
Raising awareness
In 1960 Cousteau was an important part of the movement to prevent the dumping of French atomic waste into the Mediterranean Sea. This movement ended in success. Throughout his life Cousteau enjoyed much recognition for his tireless support of ocean ecology (the relationship between organisms and their environment). In 1959 he addressed the first World Oceanic Congress, an event that received widespread coverage and led to his appearance on the cover of Time magazine on March 28, 1960.
In April of 1961 Cousteau was awarded the National Geographic 's Gold Medal at a White House ceremony hosted by President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963). It was through Cousteau's television programs, however, that his work captured the imagination of a worldwide audience. In 1966 Cousteau's first hourlong television special, "The World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau," was broadcast. It was well received by critics. The program's high ratings were important in landing Cousteau a contract with the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), which resulted in the series "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" in 1968. The program ran for eight seasons and starred Cousteau, his sons, Philippe and Jean-Michel, and sea creatures from around the globe. In order to raise public opinion against pollution, in 1975 he founded the Cousteau Society, an international organization with branches in several countries (including the United States at Norfolk, Virginia).
In honor of his achievements, Cousteau received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985. In 1987 he was inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame, and later received the founder's award from the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 1988 the National Geographic Society honored him with its Centennial Award, and in 1989 France admitted him membership in its prestigious Academy.
Cousteau died in Paris, France, on June 25, 1997, at the age of eighty-seven. While some critics have challenged his scientific credentials, Cousteau never claimed "expert status" in any discipline. But perhaps to a greater degree than any of his fellow scientists, Cousteau enlightened the public by exposing the irreversible effects of environmental destruction.
For More Information
Cousteau, J., and Alexis Sivirine. Jacques Cousteau's Calypso. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1983.
DuTemple, Lesley A. Jacques Cousteau. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2000.
King, Roger. Jacques Cousteau and the Undersea World. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001.
Klingel, Cindy. Jacques Cousteau. Chanhassen, MN: Child's World, 1998.
"The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before,
the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat."[citation needed]
Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, France to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his preparatory studies at the Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930, he entered the École Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer. After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea.
In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles, predecessors of modern swimming goggles.[1] Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and in the USSR (1939).[citation needed]
On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979). His sons took part in the adventures of the Calypso. In 1991, one year after his wife Simone's death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau's marriage to his first wife.
Early 1940s: Innovation of modern underwater divingEdit
The years of World War II were decisive for the history of diving. After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film: Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in the Embiez islands (Var) with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, using a depth-pressure-proof camera case developed by mechanical engineer Léon Vèche (engineer of Arts and Métiers and the Naval College).
In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks), in which they used two of the very first Aqua-Lung prototypes. These prototypes were made in Boulogne-Billancourt by the Air Liquide company, following instructions from Cousteau and Émile Gagnan.[2] When making Épaves, Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child's camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.[3][4]
Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa "Baobab" at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan's villa "Reine"), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds. At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine Cousteau, a "pen anti-semite" who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout (I am everywhere) and who received the death sentence in 1946. However, this was later commuted to a life sentence, and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954.
During the 1940s, Cousteau is credited with improving the aqua-lung design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today. According to his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure (1953), Cousteau started diving with Fernez goggles in 1936, and in 1939 used the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus invented in 1926 by Commander Yves le Prieur.[3] Cousteau was not satisfied with the length of time he could spend underwater with the Le Prieur apparatus so he improved it to extend underwater duration by adding a demand regulator, invented in 1942 by Émile Gagnan.[3] In 1943 Cousteau tried out the first prototype aqua-lung which finally made extended underwater exploration possible.
In 1946, Cousteau and Tailliez showed the film "Épaves" to Admiral Lemonnier, and the admiral gave them the responsibility of setting up the Groupement de Recherches Sous-marines (GRS) (Underwater Research Group) of the French Navy in Toulon. A little later it became the GERS (Groupe d'Études et de Recherches Sous-Marines, = Underwater Studies and Research Group), then the COMISMER ("COMmandement des Interventions Sous la MER", = "Undersea Interventions Command"), and finally more recently the CEPHISMER. In 1947, Chief Petty OfficerMaurice Fargues became the first diver to die using an aqualung while attempting a new depth record with the GERS near Toulon.[5]
In 1948, between missions of mine clearance, underwater exploration and technological and physiological tests, Cousteau undertook a first campaign in the Mediterranean on board the sloop Élie Monnier,[6][7] with Philippe Tailliez, Frédéric Dumas, Jean Alinat and the scenario writer Marcel Ichac. The small team also undertook the exploration of the Roman wreck of Mahdia (Tunisia). It was the first underwater archaeology operation using autonomous diving, opening the way for scientific underwater archaeology. Cousteau and Marcel Ichac brought back from there the Carnets diving film (presented and preceded with the Cannes Film Festival 1951).
Cousteau and the Élie Monnier then took part in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard's bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy was able to reuse the sphere of the bathyscaphe to construct the FNRS-3.
The adventures of this period are told in the two books The Silent World (1953, by Cousteau and Dumas) and Plongées sans câble (1954, by Philippe Tailliez).
In 1949, Cousteau left the French Navy.
In 1950, he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns (FOC), and leased a ship called Calypso from Thomas Loel Guinness for a symbolic one franc a year. Cousteau refitted the Calypso as a mobile laboratory for field research and as his principal vessel for diving and filming. He also carried out underwater archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean, in particular at Grand-Congloué (1952).
With the publication of his first book in 1953, The Silent World, he correctly predicted the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. He reported that his research vessel, the Élie Monier, was heading to the Straits of Gibraltar and noticed a group of porpoises following them. Cousteau changed course a few degrees off the optimal course to the center of the strait, and the porpoises followed for a few minutes, then diverged toward mid-channel again. It was evident that they knew where the optimal course lay, even if the humans did not. Cousteau concluded that the cetaceans had something like sonar, which was a relatively new feature on submarines.
Cousteau won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 for The Silent World co-produced with Louis Malle. With the assistance of Jean Mollard, he made a "diving saucer" SP-350, an experimental underwater vehicle which could reach a depth of 350 meters. The successful experiment was quickly repeated in 1965 with two vehicles which reached 500 meters.
In 1957, he was elected as director of the Oceanographical Museum of Monaco. He directed Précontinent, about the experiments of diving in saturation (long-duration immersion, houses under the sea), and was admitted to the United States National Academy of Sciences.
He was involved in the creation of Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques and served as its inaugural president from 1959 to 1973.[8]
In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the Mediterranean Sea by the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA). The CEA argued that the dumps were experimental in nature, and that French oceanographers such as Vsevelod Romanovsky had recommended it. Romanovsky and other French scientists, including Louis Fage and Jacques Cousteau, repudiated the claim, saying that Romanovsky had in mind a much smaller amount. The CEA claimed that there was little circulation (and hence little need for concern) at the dump site between Nice and Corsica, but French public opinion sided with the oceanographers rather than with the CEA atomic energy scientists. The CEA chief, Francis Perrin, decided to postpone the dump.[9] Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which in less than two weeks gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway tracks, and it was sent back to its origin.
Cousteau on the Calypso.
A meeting with American television companies (ABC, Métromédia, NBC) created the series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, with the character of the commander in the red bonnet inherited from standard diving dress) intended to give the films a "personalized adventure" style. This documentary television series ran for ten years from 1966 to 1976. A second documentary series, The Cousteau Odyssey, ran from 1977 to 1982, among others.
In 1970, he wrote the book The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea with Philippe, his son. In this book, Costeau described the oceanic whitetip shark as "the most dangerous of all sharks".
In 1973, along with his two sons and Frederick Hyman, he created the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life, Frederick Hyman being its first President; it now has more than 300,000 members.
On December 1975, two years after the volcano's last eruption, The Cousteau Society was filming Voyage au bout du monde on Deception Island, Antarctica, when Michel Laval, Calypso's second in command, was struck and killed by a rotor of the helicopter that was ferrying between Calypso and the island.
In 1976, Cousteau uncovered the wreck of HMHS Britannic. He also found the wreck of the French 17th-century ship-of-the-line La Therese in coastal waters of Crete.
In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN International Environment prize.
On 28 June 1979, while the Calypso was on an expedition to Portugal, his second son, Philippe, his preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969, died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon. Cousteau was deeply affected. He called his then eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel Cousteau, to his side. This collaboration lasted 14 years.
In 1975 John Denver released the tribute song "Calypso" on his album "Windsong", and on the B-side of his hit song "I'm Sorry". "Calypso" became a hit on its own and was later considered the new A-side, reaching #2 on the charts.
In 1980, Cousteau traveled to Canada to make two films on the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, Cries from the Deep and St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea.[10]
In 1985, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.
On 24 November 1988, he was elected to the Académie française, chair 17, succeeding Jean Delay. His official reception under the Cupola took place on 22 June 1989, the response to his speech of reception being given by Bertrand Poirot-Delpech. After his death, he was replaced under the Cupola by Érik Orsenna on 28 May 1998.
In June 1990, the composer Jean Michel Jarre paid homage to the commander by entitling his new album Waiting for Cousteau. He also composed the music for Cousteau's documentary "Palawan, the last refuge".
On 2 December 1990, his wife Simone Cousteau died of cancer.
In June 1991, in Paris, Jacques-Yves Cousteau remarried, to Francine Triplet, with whom he had (before this marriage) two children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Francine Cousteau currently continues her husband's work as the head of the Cousteau Foundation and Cousteau Society. From that point, the relations between Jacques-Yves and his elder son worsened.
In November 1991, Cousteau gave an interview to the UNESCO Courier, in which he stated that he was in favour of human population control and population decrease. Widely quoted on the internet are these two paragraphs from the interview: "What should we do to eliminate suffering and disease? It's a wonderful idea but perhaps not altogether a beneficial one in the long run. If we try to implement it we may jeopardize the future of our species...It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable".[11]
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.
In 1996, he sued his son who wished to open a holiday centre named "Cousteau" in the Fiji Islands.
On 11 January 1996, Calypso was rammed and sunk in Singapore Harbour by a barge. The Calypso was refloated and towed home to France.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau died of a heart attack on 25 June 1997 in Paris, aged 87.[12] Despite persistent rumors, encouraged by some Islamic publications and websites, Cousteau did not convert to Islam, and when he died he was buried in a Roman Catholic Christian funeral.[13] He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac in France. An homage was paid to him by the city by the inauguration of a "rue du Commandant Cousteau", a street which runs out to his native house, where a commemorative plaque was affixed.
Cousteau's submarine near Oceanographic Museum in Monaco
Cousteau's legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.[1]
Cousteau liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician." He was, in reality, a sophisticated showman, teacher, and lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the oceans.
His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticised at the time by some academics. The so-called "divulgationism", a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern television broadcasting.
Cousteau died on 25 June 1997. The Cousteau Society and its French counterpart, l'Équipe Cousteau, both of which Jacques-Yves Cousteau founded, are still active today. The Society is currently attempting to turn the original Calypso into a museum and it is raising funds to build a successor vessel, the Calypso II.
In his last years, after marrying again, Cousteau became involved in a legal battle with his son Jean-Michel over Jean-Michel licensing the Cousteau name for a South Pacific resort, 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.
In 2007, the International Watch Company introduced the IWC Aquatimer Chronograph "Cousteau Divers" Special Edition. The timepiece incorporated a sliver of wood from the interior of Cousteau's Calypso research vessel. Having developed the diver's watch, IWC offered support to The Cousteau Society. The proceeds from the timepieces' sales were partially donated to the non-profit organization involved into conservation of marine life and preservation of tropical coral reefs.[16] http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Jacques_Cousteau -----------------
Jacques Cousteau Centennial: What He Did, Why He Matters
Marking Cousteau's hundredth anniversary—five successes, one great
legacy.
French
ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau (file photo) would have celebrated his
hundredth birthday Friday.
FRENCH OCEAN EXPLORER
JACQUES COUSTEAU (FILE PHOTO) WOULD HAVE CELEBRATED HIS HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY
FRIDAY. PHOTOGRAPH BY BATES LITTLEHALES, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHI.C
The late Jacques Cousteau's
hundredth birthday is inspiring headlines and, Friday morning, a Google doodle—perhaps the ultimate
Internet accolade.
Why is the ocean explorer such
a legend? Here are five good reasons.
1. Jacques Cousteau pioneered
scuba gear.
With his iconic red beanie and
famed shipCalypso,the French
marine explorer, inventor, filmmaker, and conservationist sailed the world for
much of the late 20th century, educating millions about the Earth's oceans and
its inhabitants—and inspiring their protection.
Little of it would have been
possible without scuba gear, which Cousteau pioneered when in World War II he,
along with engineer Emile Gagnan, co-created the Aqua-Lung, a twin-hose
underwater breathing apparatus.
With the Aqua-Lung, Cousteau and
his crew were able to explore and film parts of the ocean depths that had never
been seen before.
2. Cousteau's underwater
documentaries brought a new world to viewers.
Jacques Cousteau's pioneering
underwater documentaries—including the Oscar-winning filmsThe Silent World, The Golden Fish,andWorld Without Sun—"had a storyline,"
said Clark Lee Merriam, a spokesperson for the Cousteau Society.
"Their message was 'Come
with me and look at this wonderful thing and see how it acts and
behaves,'" said Merriam, who had worked with Cousteau for nearly 20 years
before the explorer died in 1997.
"It was a deep and complete
introduction for the general public to the undersea world."
Jacques Cousteau and his team
created the first underwater habitat for humans: Conshelf I, which begat
Conshelf II and III. The habitats could house working oceanauts for weeks at a
time.
"He was ahead of even the
United States Navy, which was doing the same thing in proving people could live
and operate underwater for extended periods of time," Merriam said.
Broadly speaking, "it's
technology that industry uses now, because it's a lot less expensive to keep
someone down there working than to have them down there for 30 minutes and come
back up," she said.
4. Cousteau helped restrict
commercial whaling.
Cousteau "intervened
personally with heads of state and helped get the numbers necessary for the
[International Whaling] Commission to pass the moratorium" on commercial
whaling in 1986, Merriam said.
The moratorium remains in place
today, though some countries still hunt whales in the name of scientific
research.
5. Cousteau helped stop
underwater dumping of nuclear waste.
Cousteau organized a popular
campaign against a French-government plan to dump nuclear waste into the
Mediterranean Sea in 1960—and took his fight straight to the president of the
republic.
Cousteau "faced off with
General de Gualle in France about the proposed dumping, and he continued to
oppose nuclear power," Merriam said.
"He acknowledged that it
was a clean power source and full of possibilities but felt that—as long as
we're dealing with waste that we don't know how to handle—we should not pursue
it."
In the end, the train carrying
the waste turned back after women and children staged a sit-in on the tracks.
Jacques Cousteau, Late-Blooming
Environmentalist
Cousteau's films and books could
make the ocean seem like a boundless and bountiful wonderland, bursting with
life and blessedly isolated. But the captain himself knew better.
"He thought it was a
conceit of humans that the oceans are endless and that we can keep turning to
them as an unending source of food and anything else we wanted," Merriam
said.
By all accounts, Cousteau was
not always an ardent environmentalist, nor was he always particularly sensitive
to the creatures he was filming in the beginning. "He started out as a
spear fisherman and a world explorer, not a guardian," Merriam said.
Merriam points to a
"horrific" scene inThe Silent Worldin which theCalypsocollides with a baby sperm
whale. Believing the animal to be near death, the crew shoots the animal—then
also shoots sharks that attack the now dead whale.
Merriam remembers whenThe Silent Worldwas remastered about 20 years
ago. "Everyone in the organization said we have to cut out these really
ugly scenes that show all of this bad behavior."
But "Cousteau said, 'No, no
we're not. It was true, and it shows how far we've come and how dreadful humans
can be if we don't curtail ourselves,'" she recalled.
Jacques Cousteau Legacy Endures
If Cousteau were alive today, he
would probably be saddened by how little has been done to address pollution,
overfishing, and other threats to the world's oceans, said Bill Eichbaum, vice
president of marine and Arctic policy at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an
international conservation organization.
But Cousteau wouldn't be
discouraged, said Eichbaum, who worked with Cousteau briefly during the 1970s.
"He would be passionately
concerned, and I think, even more articulate and aggressive in urging
governments, companies, and individuals to protect the environment," he
said.
For her
part, the Cousteau Society's Merriam said, "We miss the visionary, and
we're glad he set us on the path that we're trying to keep on."
The pioneering work of undersea explorer and environmentalist Jacques Cousteau, newly available on DVD, is as fascinating as ever to modern viewers, says Simon Reeve
Jacques Cousteau was the towering figure of marine exploration, a man whose adventures - circling the globe at least 15 times - make my own trips, most recently travelling around the Tropic of Capricorn and the Equator, feel positively mundane by comparison.
More than anyone else in history, he introduced us to the beautiful and mysterious world beneath the surface of our oceans, co-inventing the Aqualung during the Second World War and then making award-winning films and scores of underwater documentaries for American and global television.
During his long career Cousteau, who died in 1997, was rightly recognised as a pioneer. After his friend and patron Thomas Loel Guinness gave him a former Royal Navy minesweeper in 1951, Cousteau spent nearly five decades sailing the oceans, making Calypso the most famous small boat in the world.
Cousteau turned Calypso into a floating laboratory, complete with a film-editing suite, and aboard it made the first full-length underwater film, the 1956 Oscar-winning epic The Silent World. He published more than 40 books, including a 20-volume encyclopaedia called The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau, and became one of the first global environmental stars, warning that humans were poisoning the planet.
So it is a fascinating treat, and a professional education, to watch the great man's later adventures on a new DVD box set featuring his documentaries on New Zealand, Tahiti, Haiti, Cuba and Cape Horn. He easily holds his own among the best television travellers, but even against the modern brilliance of Planet Earth the films stand up well.
Inevitably there are wobbly shots and dodgy angles. Cousteau had to make do without the full enhancing and grading capabilities of modern editing suites, and as a result much of the underwater footage appears visually dull and lacking in colour. Nevertheless, many of the images are still breathtaking, and rank alongside the finest modern natural history camerawork. The films feel real, genuine, like polished vinyl next to the CD-quality of recent wildlife films.
It is hard to imagine a major US network commissioning these programmes today - and more's the pity. The films have only the briefest of nods to dramatic tension, ponderous scripts, and a small, stooped Frenchman with bad teeth as the central presenter. Cousteau is also old and wise, both traits considered unattractive in our youth-obsessed world.
But Cousteau understood his medium and recognised the need for gimmickry. He used all manner of gadgets in his films, kept a red woollen hat on his head at a jaunty angle, and forced his crew to wear eye-catching silvery diving outfits underwater. They look like a cross between Flash Gordon and Woody Allen in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.
Since Cousteau's death in 1997, his legacy has taken a few knocks. Allegations of anti-Semitism and mistreatment of wildlife during his early films have dented his reputation. But claims by bitter relatives that he was overly ambitious and arrogant, repeated in endless press profiles, cannot obscure the man's extraordinary achievements or the value of his timeless films.
As a documentary-maker, I particularly admire the fact that Cousteau does not commit the grave sin of focusing exclusively on glossy wildlife footage without giving the surrounding context.
For decades, even the finest natural history filmmakers have made wonderful films about concentrated groups of creatures living in small patches of wilderness, while ignoring surrounding deforestation and framing their shots to exclude the tourist coach party on safari. So we have watched in awe, but without learning of threats to the creature or the reality of their sanctuary.
Cousteau was approaching the end of his career when he made the films featured in this box set, and his formula had evolved. Less than half of the episode about Haiti is set underwater; the rest of the programme is an exploration of Haiti and an explanation of how precious land and marine resources have been systematically devastated.
In Cuba, Cousteau chats with Fidel Castro in various locations, and the footage is woven through the film. The US base at Guantanamo Bay even makes an appearance, with Cousteau questioning the base commander about whether a US presence on the island "whoo-milliates Cuba".
Viewers young and old who would never normally watch anything on Caribbean politics are gently introduced to issues that still resonate today, more than 20 years later.
In some small way, this is what the BBC and I have tried to do with our series Tropic of Capricorn. My latest adventure, following the southern border of the tropics, is an attempt to introduce television viewers to the delights and tragedies of obscure parts of the world.
Cousteau remains the master of the craft. His enthusiasm is contagious. I have long been happy on the ocean surface, sinking no further than the limitations of snorkelling allow. But after several hours watching Cousteau and his crew exploring the great blue depths, I will now be swapping my snorkel for a scuba tank, and learning how to dive.
Simon Reeve presents Tropic of Capricorn on BBC2, Sunday nights at 8pm, repeated on Thursday nights at 11.20pm. His accompanying book, Tropic of Capricorn, is published by BBC Books. Jacques Cousteau: New Zealand, Tahiti, Cuba & Cape Horn, the DVD box set, is released on March
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.