Jacques Yves Cousteau

Text and design by Martin Galea De Giovanni

 
 
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Legendary marine explorer, inventor, innovator, filmmaker and environmental activist Jacques Cousteau was born June 11, 1910 in Saint André de Cubzac, a small town in southwest France.

He was admitted to the French Naval Academy in Brest and became a gunnery officer of the French Navy, which gave him the opportunity to make his first underwater experiments. In 1936 he tested a model of underwater eyeglasses, perhaps the ancestors of modern masks.

In 1950 he bought his famous ship Calypso, with which he visited the most interesting waters of the planet, including some rivers. During these trips he produced many books and films, one of which won the top award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956. These works did a great deal to popularize knowledge of underwater biology.

This ship has an interesting history and also a curious connection with Malta. It first served as a minesweeper during the Second World War, then as the Gozo ferry boat before being converted to Cousteau's research vessel for 46 years. She was decommissioned in 1946 and laid up in Malta where she was acquired by Joseph Gasan, a Maltese businessman who used her commercially for a short period as a car ferry which operated between Malta and Gozo in the 1950s. In this configuration she was capable of carrying 11 cars and 400 passengers, and her name was changed to Calypso G.

Cousteau's popularity was increasing. In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the sea by EURATOM. He 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 was sent back to its origin.

In 1974 he created the Cousteau Society for the protection of ocean life, which now has more than 300,000 members.

In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN international environment prize, and a few years later he also received the American Liberty Medal from Jimmy Carter, then president of the United States. Cousteau liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician".

He was in reality a sophisticated lover of nature, especially that of the sea. His work allowed people of all continents to visit life under the ocean's surface and explore through television the resources of the "blue continent".

Cousteau liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician". He was in reality a sophisticated lover of nature, especially that of the sea. His work allowed people of all continents to visit life under the ocean's surface and explore through television the resources of the "blue continent".

Now Cousteau's figure is admired, beloved worldwide through the many that love the sea, and is regarded to with a sort of devotion, as symbolic of adventure, nature and exploration.