Silent World 1956 by Jaques Cousteau Complete Movie

[toliver66]

Jaques Cousteau set a bad example. I hate to discredit the guy, being the inventor and founder of our beloved sport.
BUT GREAT GODS THESE GUYS WERE HORRIBLE !

For someone that had such a great love of the sea and the under water world they certainly had no respect for it. In the episode "Sunken Treasure" They destroyed hundreds of tons of coral reef just to find out they were on the wrong wreck and their was no treasure to be found. Talk about treasure... the coral they destroyed was worth millions on the salt water aquarium market. And in the episode "The Dragons of Galapagos" one of em held an Iguana under water til it drowned just to see how long it could survive. I found it very ironic at the end of that episode when they start talking about those volcanic island paradises and how they were as yet untouched and untainted by human kind and then they continue on raping the sea in the next episode. I loved this show as kid and watched it every time it came on TV, funny how I don't remember them being so destructive.

On the other hand though, it's cool to watch them diving their then "cutting edge" dive gear and how they didn't yet have BCDs nor did they appear to need one. A lesson in buoyancy control for sure. Just goes to show that a BCD failure doesn't have to be detrimental. Perhaps we are to dependent on our BCDs today. Maybe we should practice buoyancy control in a shallow controlled environment without the use of a BCD. I'm not advocating that one should forgo the use of a BCD, but that it would be a nice skill to have just in case of BCD malfunction. Proper weighting is definitely the key. They were definitely pioneiring the sport of scuba diving and laying the foundations for unsafe/safe diving practices we follow today. They seem to have had very little regard for accent and decent rate and if you watch carefuly you can catch them holding their breath while using scuba. I guess having a decompression chamber on your dive boat might make you a little careless.

 

[fire_diver]

You can't judge previous generations by today's standards. We build on the knowledge obtained by others, even if thier methods were crude or immoral by our current thinking.

 

[CT-Rich]

I have to admit I haven't seen most of the shows since I was a kid. I did go to a talk by JMC in the 80's. I agree that they were crude in there techniques, both as divers and as scientists. They were learning as they went along. I believe that the navy had worked out quite a bit of the basics of the dive tables prior to the invention of SCUBA and the early rebreathers pre-dated SCUBA also. Hard hat divers had been going down for decades before JYC, so despite their cavalier attitudes about many things we take for gospel today, they weren't really inventing diving, they just found a cheaper, safer, more practical way to access the oceans. As far as dynamite fishing and throttling Iguana's, most biology was done at end of a gun until well into the mid twentyith century. Marine biologists were using drag nets to collect samples. The primary job of the JYC was film maker, not really Biologist and they simply didn't know any better.

Lose a couple of mates to narcossis and the bends and you become much more respectful of the limits of the technology. They were looking for images and thought of the ocean as this virgin territory, no others to compete with, no government regulations, no impact studies, every wreck was virgin and who was going to miss a few lumps of coral?


The world changed a lot in fifty years... the population of the earth was less than 2 billion, the ozone layer and global warming were unknown. If you felt bad about the baby whale, just think what the battle of the Atlantic m despite ust have been like for the whales ships and submarines sending off thousands of explosives with a quarter ton of high explosives in each blast. And the US and Soviets testing nuclear depth charges.... Holy crap... JYC in his crude way was opening a door that needed to be opened. despite his flaws, I totally respect what they did. Not much science, but a lot of education.

 

[toliver66]

Well said fire_diver and CT-Rich. We have come along way in 50 years. If we don't learn from our past mistakes we are domed to repeat them. And to give credit where credit is due, "The Silent World Revisited" is all about the environmental effects of diving and the current health of some of the worlds greatest reefs. 8,000 divers a day during the peak season on reefs off the coast of Egypt! Can you imagine! And the reefs are still thriving and in good health.

 

[drbill]

Pioneers often make many mistakes as they do what few before them have ever done. Without question JYC made many mistakes... but what he should be remembered for is the result of all his experiences and the lessons he learned through those mistakes. He became a true spokesman for the marine world and acknowledged most of the things he did "wrong" in his past. His son JMC (oops, sons given his relationship with the airline stewardess) and his grandchildren carry on with obtaining new knowledge of the seas and being good spokespeople for them. Some of the early films are illustrative of the state of understanding back then and should be vierwed from that perspective, not judged by today's standards (which JYC and JMC helped define).

I think back to the late 60s and early 70s. I was teaching marine biology on SCUBA and an environmentalist (nothing's changed in all those years). Some of my high school students would go out fishing for sharks (mostly blues in the days they were abundant off Catalina). Occasionally I'd go out with them. Even used the "tanned" sharkskin from blues to make "deck slippers." Some of my students started gutting the blues and releasing them back in the water to die. I eventually put a stop to this. However, we made many mistakes back then... which ultimately led to my far better understanding today. One should learn from one's mistakes.

 

[DMDavid]

Just received my Blu-Ray version of this movie and what a flood of memories it brought back.

 

[OldNSalty]

Talk about treasure... the coral they destroyed was worth millions on the salt water aquarium market.

I am not sure you are really coming off as a conservationsit here...breaking it up to sell is pretty much just as damaging as just breaking it up IMO.

 

[toliver66]

I am not sure you are really coming off as a conservationsit here...breaking it up to sell is pretty much just as damaging as just breaking it up IMO.

I'm not trying to come off as a conservationist. Just pointing out the fact that if they were going to destroy the reef for treasure then the reef itself is a treasure. Not to mention a sure thing since they never found the treasure anyway.