Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker, and author. He helped create the first successful underwater breathing equipment called the Aqua-Lung. This invention allowed him to make some of the first underwater documentaries.

Cousteau wrote many books about his underwater explorations. His first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, described his belief that porpoises can sense objects using sound. The book was turned into a film titled The Silent World. Directed by Cousteau and Louis Malle, the film was among the first to use color underwater filming to show the ocean. It won the Palme d'Or award in 1956 at the Cannes Film Festival and remained the only documentary to win this award until 2004. The film also received the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1957.

From 1966 to 1976, Cousteau hosted a television series called The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. A second series, The Cousteau Odyssey, aired from 1977 to 1982 on public television.

Biography

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.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born on June 11, 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, France, to Daniel Cousteau and Élisabeth Duranthon. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his early education at the Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930, he joined the École navale and graduated as a naval officer. However, an automobile accident that broke both his arms ended his career in naval aviation. The accident forced Cousteau to change his plans to become a naval pilot, so he turned his attention to exploring the ocean.

In Toulon, where he worked on the ship Condorcet, Cousteau began his first underwater experiments. His friend Philippe Tailliez lent him Fernez underwater goggles in 1936, which were early versions of modern swimming goggles. Cousteau also worked for the French Navy’s information service and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and to the USSR (1939).

On July 12, 1937, Cousteau married Simone Melchior, his business partner. They had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979). His sons later joined him on the Calypso. In 1991, six months after Simone’s death from cancer, Cousteau married Francine Triplet. They had a daughter, Diane Cousteau (born 1980), and a son, Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982, during Cousteau’s first marriage).

The years of World War II were important for diving history. After the 1940 armistice, Cousteau and his family moved to Megève, where he became friends with the Ichac family. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared a goal: to show the public places that were hard to reach—for Cousteau, the underwater world, and for Ichac, the high mountains. In 1943, they won the first shared prize at the Congress of Documentary Film for the film Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing equipment the year before in the Embiez islands, using a special camera case designed by engineer Léon Vèche.

In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks), using two of the first Aqua-Lung prototypes. These prototypes were built by Air Liquide in Boulogne-Billancourt, following instructions from Cousteau and Émile Gagnan.

Cousteau maintained connections with English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and often spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier). His villa "Baobab" in Sanary, France, was across from Admiral Darlan’s villa "Reine." Cousteau helped the French Navy join with the Allies by leading a commando operation against Italian spies in France and received military honors for his work. At this time, he avoided his brother Pierre-Antoine Cousteau, who edited the pro-Nazi newspaper Je suis partout and was sentenced to death in 1946. This sentence was later changed to a life sentence, and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954.

During the 1940s, Cousteau improved the Aqua-Lung design, which led 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 used the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus invented by Commander Yves le Prieur in 1926. He was not satisfied with how long the Le Prieur device allowed him to stay underwater, so he added a demand regulator, invented by Émile Gagnan in 1942, to extend underwater time. In 1943, Cousteau tested the first Aqua-Lung prototype, which made long underwater exploration possible. In 1994, Hans Hass claimed he was the first to use a mobile, self-contained diving apparatus and told Cousteau about this.

In 1946, Cousteau and Tailliez showed the film Épaves to Admiral Lemonnier, who gave them the task of creating the GRS (Underwater Research Group) for the French Navy in Toulon. Later, the group became the GERS (Underwater Studies and Research Group), then the COMISMER (Undersea Interventions Command), and finally the CEPHISMER (Expert Center for Human Diving and Undersea Intervention). In 1947, Chief Petty Officer Maurice Fargues became the first diver to die using an Aqua-Lung while attempting a depth record of 120 meters near Toulon.

In 1948, Cousteau led a campaign in the Mediterranean aboard the sloop Élie Monnier, with Philippe Tailliez, Frédéric Dumas, Jean Alinat, and writer Marcel Ichac. The team explored the Roman wreck of Mahdia, Tunisia, marking the first underwater archaeology project using autonomous diving. Cousteau and Ichac later brought back the Carnets diving film, which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951.

Cousteau and the Élie Monnier also helped rescue Professor Jacques Piccard’s bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. This rescue allowed the French Navy to reuse the bathyscaphe’s sphere to build the FNRS-3.

The events of this time are described in 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 the ship Calypso from Thomas Loel Guinness for one franc a year. He converted Calypso into a mobile laboratory for research and as his main vessel for diving and filming. He also conducted underwater archaeological digs in the Mediterranean, especially at Grand-Congloué in

Death and legacy

Jacques-Yves Cousteau died from a heart attack on June 25, 1997, in Paris, two weeks after his 87th birthday. He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac, his birthplace. The town honored him by naming the street near his birth home "rue du Commandant Cousteau" and placing a plaque there to remember him.

Cousteau's legacy includes over 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.

Cousteau called himself an "oceanographic technician," but he was also an entertaining presenter, teacher, and lover of nature. His work helped many people learn about the resources of the oceans.

His work also introduced a new way of sharing scientific ideas, which some academics criticized at the time. This method, called "divulgationism," became widely used in other fields and is now an important part of modern television.

His Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, and possibly Cousteau himself, is believed to have introduced the "Killer Algae" Caulerpa taxifolia, which is harming the Mediterranean's ecosystem.

The Cousteau Society and its French group, l'Équipe Cousteau, both founded by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, are still active today. The Society is working to turn the original Calypso ship into a museum and is raising money to build a new ship, Calypso II.

In 2007, the International Watch Company created a special edition of its Aquatimer Chronograph watch called the "Cousteau Divers." The watch included a piece of wood from the Calypso research vessel. The company also supported The Cousteau Society, and part of the money from the watch sales was donated to a group that protects marine life and coral reefs.

Fabien Cousteau, Jacques Cousteau's grandson, is building an underwater research community called Proteus off Curaçao. The structures will be located about 20 meters below the surface in a protected marine area. Scientists and divers could live and work there. Planning for the project began in 2022, and the habitat is expected to be completed by 2025.

In October 1997, an underwater plaque honoring Jacques Cousteau was placed in an underwater park near Avalon, California. Because the plaque was damaged over time, it was replaced in November 2020.

Awards and honors

During his lifetime, Jacques-Yves Cousteau received these honors:

• Cross of War 1939–1945 (1945)
• National Geographic Society's Special Gold Medal in 1961
• Commander of the Legion of Honour (1972)
• BAFTA Fellowship (1975)
• Officer of the Order of Maritime Merit (1980)
• Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit (1985)
• U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom (1985)
• Induction into the Television Hall of Fame (1987)
• Elected to the Académie Française (1988)
• Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters
• Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia (26 January 1990)

Media portrayals

Jacques Cousteau has been shown in several movies and shows:

• The American comedy movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, directed by Wes Anderson and released in December 2004, shows Steve Zissou, a made-up oceanographer who is very similar to Jacques Cousteau.
• The French movie The Odyssey, directed by Jérôme Salle and released in October 2016, focuses on Cousteau’s life, especially about his relationship with his first wife, Simone Melchior, and his second son, Philippe Cousteau.
• Jacques Cousteau appeared in Season 6 of Epic Rap Battle of History. He was played by Peter Shukoff and fought against Steve Irwin, who was played by Lloyd Ahlquist.
• Jacques Cousteau is shown in the music video for the song "Jacques Cousteau" by Plastic Bertrand. In the video, he wears ocean-themed clothes and lives in a fish bowl.
• Jacques Cousteau appeared briefly in the animated TV show SpongeBob SquarePants in the episode SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout. He was played by the French Narrator, a character who often speaks or appears in the show.