JACQUES
YVES COUSTEAU
(Marine
Explorer, Scientist)
1910-1997
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Jacque Cousteau is famous for exploring the world's oceans - but he also visited the Amazon in 1985 to study the Amazonia's river and rainforests. The Amazon river was big enough for the Calypso to sail upriver and to serve as the base for Jacque Cousteau and his team of divers. He also visited Amazon Indians and a huge goldmine at Serra Pelada. |
Jacques Yves Cousteau
has devoted much of his life to exploring the world’s oceans and defending
ocean life. He was born in Saint-Andre-de-Cubzac in 1910, and educated at the
Naval School in Brest. Cousteau was serving in the French navy as a gunnery officer when he began
his underwater explorations. In 1943 he and French engineer Emile
Gagnan
perfected the aqualung, a cylinder of compressed air connected through a
pressure-regulating valve to face mask, enabling a diver to stay underwater for
several hours. Cousteau
has made full-length films, film shorts, and numerous television films. “The Silent World (1956)”
and “World Without Sun (1966)”
each won an Academic Award as the best documentary feature of the year. Cousteau
has written many books, including a series entitled Undersea
Discoveries of Jacques-Yves-Cousteau.
He also visited
the Amazon in 1985 to study the Amazonia’s rivers and rainforests. The
Amazon River
was big enough for the Calypso to
sail upriver and to serve as the base for Jacque Cousteau and his team of
divers. He also visited the Amazon Indians and a huge goldmine at Serra
Pelada.
The man who brought us to the
depths of the ocean through the porthole of our television screens died at the
age of 87 in 1997 (June 25th) by a lengthy and unnamed illness.
"Jacques-Yves
Cousteau has rejoined the World of Silence," the Foundation said,
referring to one of his most famous documentaries.
Cousteau’s 60-year-long odyssey on the Earth’s seas -- much of it on his famous boats, the Calypso -- was more than a great adventure. After he led a 1972 voyage to Antarctica, a worldwide television audience saw -- for the first time -- the extraordinary beauty of sculptured ice formations under the sea.
"The reason why I love the sea, I cannot explain," a chuckling Cousteau said in a recent interview with the AP. "It's physical. . . . When you dive, you begin to feel that you're an angel. It's a liberation of your weight."