Fabian Cousteau - A Phony? I think he is disgracing the family name!

[drbill]

No question that by today's standards JYC's dynamiting part of the reef surrounding the Blue Hole was way out of line. However, rather than judge his action's by today's understanding (a good part of which he helped trigger with his early series, inspiring many of us to take up diving and marine biology). There were many disturbing things going on back then, including actions by scientists (and some still go on today).

I have known and worked with Jean-Michel for almost 40 years now. Certainly he benefits from his father's name (as well as his own work). I have yet to see him or his team doing anything destructive to the environment while I've been working with him. Instead he has pursued a number of educational projects ranging from his documentary work to vastly improving the environmental impacts of a camp operation he partners with here on Catalina where I helped get him access to the facility to run his Cousteau Family Camp (which hardly makes a fortune for him).

He is not disgracing the family name! His grandfather used explosives to blow up part of the reef around the blue hole in the Bahamas just for a photo op to show Calypso floating in the middle of the thing! He may not be much but he is a VAST improvement over his grandfather. There is a reason they no longer broadcast his old shows, if you saw them now you would be ripping apart just about every aspect of how they ran their diving operations.

 

[Hatul]

I also think, having watched the video, that you're over critical. So they're on their knees on the bottom with negative buoyancy, so what. It looks like they're touching a sandy bottom not coral. If you're doing photography or in his case painting, it's much easier anchored to the bottom than hovering in mid water and as long as it's not damaging coral it does no harm.

 

[tursiops]

To Fabian's credit, this particular event is likely saving the Aquarius habitat from being hauled out by NOAA and cut into scrap, which would be a shame since it is the only such research platform still in existence.

 

[TSandM]

I had the good fortune to be on a cruise ship where Jean-Michel was the featured speaker. He lectured several nights, and I found the lectures both educational and inspiring. The people to whom he was speaking were precisely the people who can help change things -- people with money and leisure time, who are often looking for causes to support. Making such people aware of things like the Pacific Gyre and non-sustainable fishing practices -- with a pragmatic approach to them -- is potentially quite beneficial. Yes, I'm sure he has made a living doing this, but what is really wrong with that?

 

[chillyinCanada]

I'd be very happy to make a living that way.

 

[00wabbit]

My favorite was the scene from one of the old movies where the crew of the boat starts dragging sharks out of the water and killing them with sledgehammers because they are eating a baby whale that the calypso ran over and had to kill. The voice over is "sharks are the enemies of divers"

http://youtu.be/3jH2QkP-Bvg?t=52m46s


This whole movie is filled with gems like this. Breaking off corals to study, dynamiting reefs to count fish, riding on the backs of Galapagos turtles etc.

 

[boulderjohn]

A lot of people do not realize that the Cousteaus are not exactly one happy family working to make a fortune off their name. Jean-Michel and his father barely talked for the last decade of the father's life. There were lawsuits. The key issues in the breakup were 1) whether Jean-Michel had the right to use the Cousteau name for his own endeavors and 2) The fact that the father had a long-term affair to the extent that he essentially had a secret second family. When his wife (the woman who ran the show on the Calypso) died, Jacques married his long-time lover. She took over when Jacques died, and she and Jean-Michel were never reconciled.

I got this from the book Jean-Michel wrote about his life with his father.

 

[kelemvor]

My favorite was the scene from one of the old movies where the crew of the boat starts dragging sharks out of the water and killing them with sledgehammers because they are eating a baby whale that the calypso ran over and had to kill. The voice over is "sharks are the enemies of divers"

Jacques Cousteau - Le Monde Du Silence - YouTube


This whole movie is filled with gems like this. Breaking off corals to study, dynamiting reefs to count fish, riding on the backs of Galapagos turtles etc.

Here's another piece of Cousteau memorabilia...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHrlXY9Gd6c

 

[SeaHorse81]

Here's another piece of Cousteau memorabilia...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHrlXY9Gd6c

Holy cow. "Let's study what fish live here by killing them all so it's easier to find them and count them."

It's a stark reminder of how differently we looked at our world not so long ago.

 

[DaleC]

Let's not be too judgmental lest others remind us of our own racist segregation laws of the same era.

Times were different. The ocean was a vast unknown, and the "environmental" movement had yet to evolve. 60 million people had just been killed during WWII and much of Europe had been "dynamited". Considering the context one could say he was acting as most would act.

One could credit JYC for being part of that evolution and creating the next generation of "conservation" minded vs "exploitation" minded diver. Did he try to make money? Yes. Last I heard,no one was offering free handouts to underwater filmmakers back then. If one reads about his early life one can see he really just wanted to dive, make movies, and had to hustle to carve a niche out of an area where no market existed.

How are divers earning a living today, besides endlessly milking the dive education/tourism/gear cow?