Man of the Sea, Man of Science

As one of his sons put it, Jacques Cousteau, who died Wednesday in Paris at 87, was “the best ambassador that France has ever had.” But he was also the oceans’ best ambassador. For, while more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is water, we knew relatively little about that part of the planet before Cousteau.

Cousteau modestly described himself as an “oceanographic technician.” But his invention in 1943 (with engineer Emile Gagnan) of an underwater breathing device called the Aqua-Lung, in 1950 of a floating marine laboratory (a converted minesweeper called Calypso) and in 1962 of manned underwater habitats, let biologists study the sea intimately for the first time.

What they saw was often pristine, from sculptured ice formations under Antarctica to ferocious sharks off Yucatan. But sometimes it was far more sullied than they had imagined. The Mediterranean in particular had grown so polluted, Cousteau wrote in one of his many bestselling books, that “if Aphrodite had to be born today from the wave, coming out of the foam, she would have boils on her bottom.” Words like these and his striking undersea images were inspiration for today’s marine conservation movement.

When “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” began airing on TV in 1966, Americans were more captivated by astronauts soaring in space than by a self-described “manfish” like Cousteau.

Cousteau had wanted to soar too, joining a naval aviation school in his early 20s. When a near-fatal car crash at age 26 denied him his wings, he was transferred to sea duty, where he swam rigorously to strengthen badly weakened arms. But with the same high hopes he passed on to us through books and television, Cousteau embraced the change as an opportunity, not a disappointment, and quickly grew to love the ocean. “Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed,” he wrote. “It happened to me ... when my eyes were opened to the sea.” CAPTION; Cousteau: oceanic ambassador.