Cousteau: Old Man, Son, the Sea : Heir-Designate Jean-Michel Stays in the Background

Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the ocean explorer and film maker, is preparing to dive on a reef off Papua New Guinea with his son Jean-Michel. In six decades at sea, he has made countless dives, but this time it’s different. There’s a quiet tension among the crew and cameramen on the fantail of Calypso.

Cousteau is 78 years old, his ears have been damaged by repeated exposure to the depths, and though he remains chipper and vigorous, the creeping frailty of age is etched deeply in his wrinkles. He’s seldom at sea anymore, seldom dives, and it’s uncertain how this dive will work out.

Jean-Michel, his 50-year-old son, bearded, tanned and looking like a disheveled Greek god, is zipped up in his silver wet suit, ready to go.

As heir-designate to the worldwide Cousteau empire of fact and fantasy, he’s careful to keep himself slightly in the background. The message is clear: Make no mistake. I’m good, but the old man’s claim to center stage remains beyond question.

The Next Generation

For now. Inevitably, Cousteau’s reign as grand admiral of world ocean ecology must sometime end. In Jean-Michel is the strength of the next generation ready to take the helm.

The other members of the dive team descend a ladder into the sea amid a hubbub of fins, tanks, masks and regulators. Cousteau, resplendent in his signature black wet suit, flip-flops to the ladder.

He’s standing there alone, wispy white hair blowing in the wind, adjusting his gear. The cameras are rolling and, except for their click and whir, a silence falls over the scene. It seems a frozen moment, the kind Cousteau and his teams have consistently happened upon--or contrived--to the delight of audiences around the world.

Suddenly, Albert Falco, the squat, dark sailor from the South of France who has been Cousteau’s indispensable right-hand man for 30 years, is at his side with a nasal inhaler containing Albuterol to clear his wind passages.

Then, without further ado, Cousteau clambers agilely down the ladder, pauses to place his mask and regulator and slips into the clear water. His son follows close behind, deferential and very much in the spotlight himself.

Together, they disappear into the deep blue of the lagoon.

The passing of power from one generation to the next is a tricky business, and with the Cousteaus it is perhaps even more difficult because what is changing hands is not dollars or acres or tonnage, but the stuff of dreams.

Clean oceans and world peace are visions shared by father and son, but father and son are also film makers, impresarios, spinners of some of the most powerfully sustaining bourgeois illusions of the Modern Age.

It was Cousteau who introduced us to the ocean’s underwater splendors. He helped invent the diving and photographic gear that made it possible for ordinary people to view this amazing world. In doing so, the lean Frenchman with the radiant grin captured American imaginations and became a role model for generations.

He built his dreams into a cinematic and publishing empire that has produced 60 books and 90 movies and television shows. The “Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” series was seen by hundreds of millions of people in more than 100 lands from 1968 to 1976. An estimated 200 million worldwide are now watching Cousteau’s ambitious “Rediscovery of the World,” a five-year, $15-million series of 20 specials for Turner Broadcasting System.

The Cousteau Society today has 300,000 members, mainly in the United States and France. About 135 employees working in New York, Paris, Los Angeles and Norfolk publish newsletters, plan expeditions, provision the ships and crews and help produce the films and books.

Calypso, Cousteau’s famous exploration ship, which costs $8,000 a day to operate, is now in the South Pacific to work on the “Rediscovery” series with the society’s second vessel, Alcyone.

Jean-Michel, who divides the supervision of expeditions with his father, is in charge of the society’s day-to-day operations. And together, father and son are making plans for Calypso II, an ultramodern exploration ship that will enable Jean-Michel and his children to carry the work of the society into the next century.

Jean-Michel is different from his father in many ways, and there are bound to be changes in the films when he takes over. An architect by training, he seems to mimic rather than actually possess the poetic and philosophical flair of the old man that has touched the Cousteau oeuvre with such magic; on the other hand, the son seems harder edged, perhaps more directly political and sociologically daring.

“My father was curious to look underwater, so he created the equipment, he dived and reported,” Jean-Michel says.

Then, discovering that man was polluting and depleting the oceans, the father began an environmental crusade. For Jean-Michel, the mandate now extends far beyond merely “looking at pretty fish.”

Last year, the son produced a film about “the extraordinary tradition of peace” in Costa Rica, which abolished its army decades ago. “Island of Peace” contains an interview with Nobel Peace Prize-winner Oscar Arias, the president of Costa Rica, and, as a blurb puts it, “traditional Cousteau scenes of stunning beauty undersea.” In fact, there are few of the latter in what is basically a big, warm and fuzzy film about Arias.

Jean-Michel’s father agreed to this, although he wouldn’t have done it himself. When he arrives in Papua New Guinea to spend a few weeks making cameo appearances--like the dive scene--toward the end of a four-month expedition supervised by Jean-Michel, the father immediately orders more filming of fish.

“They had filmed fishermen, gold mines, traditional ceremonies, all sorts of interesting things--kids making little boats and underwater shipwrecks and airplanes,” runs his complaint. “But Calypso had done practically no filming of undersea life! I wanted to fill that gap.”

In many ways, and notwithstanding his lilting accent and splendid Gallic nose, the son seems much more American than his very French father. Indeed, the son has lived in various U.S. cities and lectured across America for most of the past two decades, and now he and his wife, Anne-Marie, have a home in Connecticut. They also use an apartment in the society’s Manhattan headquarters. And as Jean-Michel considers expanding the society’s membership and viewer-ship in the future, it’s largely to the big U.S. market that he looks.

Tensions between fathers and sons are normal enough, and the Cousteaus have developed a complex pattern of cooperation and jockeying in which tender mutual regard seems mixed with barely suppressed irritation. “He’s my friend--a very intimate friend,” Cousteau says of his son. Jean-Michel says with a smile: “There’s a sailor and a sub-sailor. I’m the sub-sailor.”

The drama is accentuated by the presence of their wives, both deeply involved in Cousteau Society work. Anne-Marie, dynamic and in her mid-40s with chestnut hair and sparkling blue eyes, is struggling as any modern woman to balance conflicting demands of family and her emerging career as an expedition photographer. “I stayed home many years,” she says. “I felt I had to for the kids.” Now she’s often on expedition, and in strong leadership roles.

Simone, Cousteau’s wife of 51 years, is a reclusive charmer in her mid-70s. The world’s first woman diver in the ‘40s, she has arranged her life so that she lives aboard Calypso much, if not most, of the year. The little air-conditioned captain’s cabin amidships is her home, and to the crew she is affectionately known as La Bergere, the shepherdess. When her husband and son go diving, she watches intently. “Ay yi yi, quelle aventure!” she exclaims. “The two generations go diving together!”

Jean-Michel and his younger brother, Philippe, grew up diving with their parents. The great turning point in Jean-Michel’s life came with the death of Philippe in 1979 in a plane crash. The death propelled Jean-Michel to the forefront. His father had favored the more flamboyant younger son and had been grooming him for command. “When my brother died, my father spoke to me and said, ‘Let’s join forces,’ ” Jean-Michel recalls.

A Difficult Task

The expedition to Papua New Guinea, a primitive island nation north of Australia in the South Pacific, provides a rare opportunity to observe father and son together, and the tensions between them.

Calypso, under the father’s supervision and 150 miles at sea steaming toward the Hermit Islands, and Alcyone, under Jean-Michel’s supervision and anchored in the Sepik River on the Papuan mainland, are about to meet for the first time in three years. Both vessels are involved in filming a “Rediscovery” segment about Papua New Guinea and its 1,000-mile-long chain of islands.

As Alcyone approaches the atoll at dawn for the meeting, cottonball puffs of clouds pinken over the still-dark sea. Jean-Michel stands in the wheelhouse drinking coffee. “Everybody up; it’s a magical time!” he shouts. Below, the crew stirs.

No one can see Calypso yet, but she’s approaching from over the horizon at full speed.

The father’s voice crackles over the radio. “We’ll put Felix up at 6,” he says, referring to Calypso’s little helicopter, which will film the meeting from aloft.

“That’s too early!” Jean-Michel replies.

They negotiate.

At 6:10, says Zheek (as intimates call Cousteau, a phonetic reference to his initials, JYC). “The helicopter is up.”

At 6:15, Anne-Marie, standing on deck, glassing the horizon, shouts, “I see them! I see the chopper and Calypso, too!”

Soon Felix is buzzing above. “Bonjour, Felix,” Jean-Michel says over the radio.

“Bonjour, “ pilot Bob Braunbeck says. “We are filming you.”

Now Calypso is plainly in view, steaming hard, like a souped-up version of the African Queen. With the two ships closing fast, Jean-Michel goes on deck with a cameraman, who struggles with film and filters as Jean-Michel shouts at him: “Go, go!”

Then, icily: “If you could be rolling, that would be very nice--LIKE, NOW!”

Suddenly the ships are passing, the crews standing at the rails shouting and waving, Klaxons blaring and Jean-Michel’s cameraman, fortunately, filming like mad. The father might not understand if his son missed the magic moment on film.

As the ships pass, Zheek himself appears on Calypso’s deck: lean, smiling, stoop-shouldered, wearing his characteristic red knit cap.

Jean-Michel gives his dad a snappy salute, and Alcyone swings around to follow, to the side and just slightly behind; not quite in Dad’s wake.

For the benefit of the cameras, father and son stage a talk over hand-held radios as they stand on the decks of their moving ships.

“It’s a dream and an adventure,” Jean-Michel says.

“It’s also the reunion for the strongest protection of the environment,” his father says. “There’s no other organization with so many resources dedicated to this cause, and for once we’re all together and not scattered around the world.”

It’s show biz, but sincere.

The days of diving on the reef go smoothly, with father and son meeting for long hours to plan the rest of the expedition. The father takes every opportunity to voice his opinion and to shape the film, which Jean-Michel will edit later in New York. At lunch one day aboard Calypso, while Jean-Michel is diving, he urges the film’s writer, Mose Richards, to redirect his thinking.

“It’s an almost impossible task!” Zheek says, as Richards, bearded and soft-spoken, listens attentively. “We arrive and are confronted with people who are worlds apart. We get interested, and we forget why we came. We are here to study how their community influences their relationship with water. We forget why we are here! We film scarification (a traditional skin-cutting ceremony).”

“But that has to do with crocodiles,” Richards counters.

“OK!” Zheek expostulates in the French manner, “but we’re forgetting: Why did we come? Here there’s a very good thing: The war, how did it influence the people in relation with the water? It did! All those shipwrecks are interesting as shipwrecks, but we didn’t have an opportunity to talk seriously with some of the cultivated people about that.”

Richards nods.

Later, there is again tension between father and son as they plan their joint dive. It transpires that the only reason everyone is sitting around at this reef, which has very little fish life, is that its coral formations are beautiful and provide a perfect cinematic backdrop for the dive. The dive is all-important for the Papua film, since a Cousteau show without an appearance by the father wouldn’t be the same.

Dive Is a Mixed Bag

As it happens, the Great Joint Dive turns out to be a mixed bag, successful only in that father and son are filmed diving together. The father can manage to stay underwater only 10 minutes.

After they surface, Jean-Michel is cautious. “I was glad to be in the water with him again after three years,” he says. “We ran into some very beautiful coral formations. That was nice.”

Nice, but not splendid, not thrilling.

“A small dive!” Cousteau says, energetically peeling off his dripping wet suit. The father doesn’t like having attention focused on his fading ability. He had sought to head off problems by privately making half a dozen short dives days earlier, hoping to acclimate his ears and, perhaps, reassure himself that he could still do it.

Suddenly a deus ex machina shifts this awkward spotlight off him: A huge flock of sea birds whirls in strange synchronism just over the waves not far away, and everybody looks.

Immediately Cousteau is back in charge, hands on hips, shouting orders: “Where’s the camera?”

Jean-Michel and a film crew zoom toward the birds in a rubber speedboat.

Zheek watches.

“No, no! They don’t look!” he moans in a complaint addressed to no one in particular. “It’s not possible!”

Whatever his son is doing, apparently it’s not quite right.

Later, when the son makes a last dive without his father in the rough water outside the reef, he reports excitedly that it was “a great dive. There was a giant turtle sitting on the reef. It was beautiful!”

And a few days after that, he tells Richards flatly, “We totally missed out (on the reef). The last dive was the proof of it!”

Much of Jean-Michel’s tension on the reef was due to his earlier failure to find the elusive priest, Dambui. Now he wants to return to the Sepik River and give it another try, “if I can get Zheek’s approval.”

But Zheek is worried that the interview might offend the government. This frustrates Jean-Michel, who needs the interview with Dambui to make his footage hang together; Dambui has a comprehensive knowledge of the land and people.

Finally, Zheek approves, and Jean-Michel succeeds in locating Dambui, who appears on Alcyone’s deck wearing green shorts, a T-shirt and a big, friendly smile.

“Is your father still living?” he inquires.

“Yes,” Jean-Michel replies and plunges into the interview. It’s immediately apparent that the articulate and charming priest will add tremendously to the film; Jean-Michel’s instincts were on target.

“The white man’s arrival was very much of a surprise,” Dambui says. “The people were caught up in speculation about it, and they looked back at their traditional legends for an explanation, and it was explained that there were two brothers.”

Jean-Michel cocks his ear with interest. Dambui goes on: “The younger brother was more informed in the fine arts and gifted in creativity, but there was a struggle between them. The other brother’s wife was interested in the younger brother, and probably had sex with him. So the younger brother left the country.

“Now, when the white man came, he had more knowledge and skill than the people, and so the people thought it was the younger brother coming back. And this was a great story in many of the villages.”

Jean-Michel is speechless. It is the perfect story; another perfect Cousteau moment.

Everyone is together once again, and for the last time on this expedition, in Madang, a port town on the north Papuan coast. It’s time to say farewell.

The ships tie up at a resort hotel, and, with great scurrying, the reprovisioning begins.

Jean-Michel, Richards, Zheek and others meet to plan the last loose ends of the expedition. Zheek is to depart by air for Paris in the morning; Simone will remain aboard Calypso at least until it reaches Singapore. Jean-Michel and Anne-Marie will leave the day after, he to Los Angeles, she to New York. With them will go several crates containing most of the expedition’s film.

The last night there’s a reception and dinner for the Cousteaus given by the hotel owner, Peter Barter, in his Trader Vic’s-style restaurant by the sea. Andrew Ariako, premier of Madang Province, and other notables are gathered.

The premier gives a little speech, saying how happy he is that the Cousteau film “will bring us a long way as far as tourism is concerned.”

It is the sort of stuff that would make Jean-Michel wince.

Then Zheek says a few words, praising “the gentleness of the Papua New Guinea people.”

During dinner, the sea crashes nearby, and the wind blows right through the open restaurant. There’s a band, and, at the end, when everyone gets up to leave, it plays “La Vie en Rose,” the Edith Piaf song (“Hold me close and hold me fast. . . .”).

“Oh my,” Simone says, under her breath.