Tribute to Captain Jacques Yves Cousteau­
world citizen, ambassador for a healthy planet.

It was with sadness that the world learned of the death of Jacques Cousteau on June 25th. To the general population Captain Cousteau was the famous French underwater explorer and film maker. A man who roamed the oceans of the world, exploring and filming new frontiers in his converted minesweeper, Calypso, which was immortalized in the song by John Denver. To the members of the scuba diving community he was and still is the man who gave us scuba diving. And to the business of diving he was the person responsible for creating a whole industry. He will always be known and remembered as the Father of Scuba Diving.

Jacques Cousteau was born in 1910 and at the age of 10 did his first dive in a lake in Vermont.

Jacques Cousteau was a French naval officer who had become acquainted with high altitude breathing systems used on aircraft. As an avid breath-hold diver he realized the potential for using such a system for breathing underwater. The engineering concepts were basically the same and the regulators could be adapted for diving. To implement the idea, in Paris in 1943, he and his partner, Emile Gagnan, an engineer with L'Air Liquide, they worked on their idea, using a cooking gas regulator that eventually became the first divers' Aqualung.

After the war Cousteau continued diving with the French Navy and L'Air Liquide set up a Canadian operation to manufacture the regulator. La Spirotechnique in France was formed at that time to market the product. And that company today is still an affiliate of U.S. Divers, the manufacturer and supplier of Aqualung products. He remained involved in the development of diving equipment in the years that followed and helped introduce such innovations as the 80 cubic foot aluminum tank and a host of wetsuits, masks, fins and snorkels, field testing products while out filming and exploring aboard the Calypso.

The adventures of Captain Cousteau and his team aboard Calypso have been well documented in his television movies and numerous books. His adventures have taken him into practically all the oceans of the world including Antarctica and the Arctic as well as waterways such as the Amazon where he met with and recorded on film many peoples and species of marine life for the first time.

Captain Cousteau served as Chairman of the Board of US Divers until his death. He also formed the Cousteau Society which is dedicated to preserving the world's oceans and educating the public about the effects of pollution. In his final years he was working on the replacement of the Calypso with a new vessel, a project the organisation is continuing, to further the objectives of the Society.

The captain in his 87 years had brought the beauty of the underwater world to millions of people. He had become most famous for his long running series of underwater television adventures "Underseas World of Jacques Cousteau." He tested and innovated new and advanced diving equipment. He made the world's earliest movies of sharks and shipwrecks. And his work earned him three Oscars among many other awards.

His lifelong love affair with the ocean as a writer and filmmaker had placed him as one of the best known public figures in the world. For the benefit of the world population Captain Cousteau made global education about the ocean his mission in life and played a great role in making the world care about the oceans. As an explorer and advocate for clean oceans he had addressed many governments and heads of state on the concerns about pollution and preserving the environment. And he spent the last decades of his life campaigning against pollution.