Jacques Cousteau

Jacques-Yves Cousteau, né le 11 juin 1910 à Saint-André-de-Cubzac (Gironde) et mort le 25 juin 1997 à Paris 17e, est un officier de la Marine nationale et explorateur océanographique français.

Surnommé « le commandant Cousteau », « JYC » ou encore « le Pacha »n 1, il est connu pour avoir perfectionné avec Émile Gagnan le principe du scaphandre autonome avec l'invention du détendeur portant leurs noms, pièce essentielle à la plongée sous-marine moderne.

Les films et documentaires télévisés de ses explorations sous-marines en tant que commandant de la Calypso ont rencontré une large audience.

Jacques-Yves was born in the summer of 1910 to Daniel Cousteau and Elizabeth Duranton in the French commune of Saint-André-de-Cubzac. At the time of his birth, his parents were already raising his older brother, Pierre-Antoine. The father, a well-known lawyer in France, received a doctorate in law in his youth. Mom, the daughter of a pharmacist, did not continue the pharmacy business, she took care of the house and children. The income from Daniel's practice enabled the family to travel. Little Jacques-Yves enthusiastically learned to swim and dive while relaxing on the coast. Sea water seemed to bewitch him, but for some time he had to forget about the loads: when the boy was 7, doctors diagnosed him with chronic enteritis, the cause of the unnatural thinness of the baby.

During the First World War, his father lost his job, and the family moved to the States, where he was offered a job in a law firm. The sons were sent to school, where they willy-nilly began to learn English. Cousteau was twelve when the whole family returned to their homeland. Jacques-Yves entered the prestigious Stanislas College in Paris at that time and became interested in invention. He built an electric car on his own, and with the accumulated pocket money he bought a Pathe movie camera and enthusiastically filmed everything that, in his opinion, deserved attention.

He decided to realize his long-standing dream of the sea at the age of twenty by enrolling in the Ecole Naval Naval School, where officers for the French navy were trained. Two years later, the group in which Jacques-Yves studied made a round-the-world trip on the Jeanne d'Arc ship. During a stop in Vietnam, the attention of the young man was attracted by pearl divers. Without any equipment, fishermen dived from boats into the sea and caught fish with their bare hands. Cousteau became interested in how this could be, and it was explained to him that fish also have a siesta, during which it is easy to catch them. Later, the ocean explorer will tell you that it was this conversation that was the turning point in his life.

Convinced that scuba diving had a great future, Cousteau received a position as an instructor while serving on the cruiser Sufren. He took up diving in earnest as soon as he returned home in the late thirties.

In 1940, France capitulated to Nazi Germany. Miraculously escaping capture, Jacques-Yves settled in the Baobab Villa in the small coastal town of Sanary-sur-Mer and began to prepare to explore the ocean.

Together with engineer Emil Galian, they developed the first diving equipment. The Musketeers of the Sea, as they jokingly called themselves, invented and invented diving suits, protective boxes for cameras that were used for filming. In 1943, together with Frédéric Dumas and Philippe Taye Cousteau, he presented to the audience the first documentary film shot below sea level - "At a depth of 18 meters", dedicated to spearfishing. Prior to this, technical capabilities simply did not allow filming underwater.At the First Documentary Film Congress, the film received the main prize. Further more. After the war, Jacques-Yves showed one of the films he had made to Admiral André Lemonnier of the French Navy, whose efforts created a group for underwater research.

A small team led by Cousteau did not disdain any earnings: they cleared the bays from unexploded German bombs, conducted reconnaissance in the Persian Gulf for the presence of hydrocarbon deposits. All this steadily led to the main goal - the development of oceanography. In 1950, Jacques-Yves received at his disposal a decommissioned British Allied minesweeper. To redeem and re-equip the ship, he was helped by a millionaire from Ireland, Thomas Guinness, who became interested in the activities of Cousteau. The ship was named "Calypso" and soon began to plow the ocean under the guidance of its captain and owner.

After the first expedition, Jacques-Yves wrote the book "In the world of silence", published in 1953 and glorified Cousteau throughout the world. The film of the same name won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Oscar at Hollywood.

In the fifties, Jacques-Yves created the Center for Marine Research in Marseille, became director of the oceanographic museum in Monaco, and released several new films. He was accused of predation, since Cousteau allowed to kill fish with dynamite, and he explained this by saying that only in this way can one "make an accurate account of all the species inhabiting a given area."

Throughout his life, Jacques-Yves has been on dozens of expeditions, the “Underwater Odyssey of the Cousteau team” is especially memorable. The film was released on the screens of all countries of the world for twenty years. And in 1975, the researcher was recognized as the "man of the year" according to BAFTA, he won many state and film awards.

Cousteau also came to the USSR - in 1977, to talk about the importance of protecting the ocean and its flora and fauna. The researcher was gladly received on Soviet television. Interviewed with Cousteau Nikolai Drozdov . The Frenchman also gave a lecture at the Institute of Oceanology. But he was not allowed into the waters of the Black Sea because of the large number of military facilities.

A year before his death, the oceanologist started a lawsuit against his own son from Simone. He forbade him from using the surname for commercial purposes, and the Cousteau Resort in Fiji was renamed the Jean-Michel Cousteau Resort.

lA few months later, Jacques-Yves fell ill with SARS. He was 87 years old, and the weakened body could not cope with the virus. Against the background of complications, a heart attack occurred, from which the famous researcher died on June 25, 1997. Cousteau was buried in the same city where he was born - Saint-Andre-de-Cubzac, in the cemetery where all his ancestors lie. Despite the death of the pioneer explorer of the ocean, his life's work continues to this day. Society "Team Cousteau" deals with the environmental problems of the oceans, the preservation of the heritage of Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

In 2016, French director Jérôme Salle made a sincere and poignant film about the life and family of the famous explorer called Odyssey. The lead actor, Lambert Wilson, insisted that Cousteau's human qualities, if impartial, are shown in the picture only in order to more fully recreate the "deep and sincere image of this incredible man" who did so much good for humanity.