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Discussion of diving methods and equipment available prior to the development of BCDs beyond the horse collar. This forum is dedicated to the pre-1970 diving.
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SurfLung
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Early Years of Cousteau...

Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:55 am

Cousteau... The Early Years.
- There's a bit of crossover between the Cousteau Movies and books of the same names. I got a beautiful used hardcover copy of "The Living Sea" for only $5.99 online thinking it was the first book he wrote. And it has several photos from "The Silent World" movie. Then I read that "The Silent World" is also the title of the real first book. That one, I could only find an original 1953 issue in paperback for $4.99. I ordered it yesterday so, it has yet to arrive.
- But considering so much negative has been said in recent years about Cousteau... The hypocrisy of his treatment of sea animals and the environment in order to get good video and photos, Connections with Nazi occupiers, His infidelity, etc... I have to say that what I read so far in "Living Sea" has impressed me with the strength of his character and ability to get things done.
- For instance, I'm thinking of the many connections with funding from scientific, academic, industrial, and just plain charitable sources that made the purchase, refitting, and first voyage of the Calypso possible. Cousteau must have had an amazingly infectious positive attitude and total confidence in his plan to win over all of the decision makers that made it possible.
- I'm also thinking of what a tough, serious diver he was... On that ancient ship excavation, he pulled regular shifts right along with the other divers down as deep as 130 feet, three dives a day and writes about other dives as deep as 170 to 220 feet. And about doing guard duty watching out for sharks so that a researcher could collect coral samples without getting attacked.
- The combination of getting an enterprise going on a tight budget and participating in the hands-on duties as he did make Cousteau a lot more impressive to me than the lilting, French accented, poetic narrative that characterizes his later TV shows.
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The Freedom and Simplicity of Vintage Equipment and
Vintage Diving Technique are Why I Got Back Into Diving.

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lakediver
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:27 pm

It's always tough to learn ones heroes have feet of clay but I can't imagine how the the sport diving world would be today without his drive, enthusiasm and yes showmanship skills.

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Bryan
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:36 pm

If everyone likes you, you are doing something wrong. A certain segment of people these days want to hold what happened in the past to the standards of acceptability we have today which is total nonsense to put it nicely.
Cousteau was my hero long before I ever heard all the negative stuff written about him. As many of you guys watched Sea Hunt first hand and remember how it inspired you, I say the same thing about Jacques Cousteau. I would put on my mask and fins and watch The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and pretend to dive along with the divers of the Calypso. I was PO'd when the show did not have scuba diving on it!
I carried one or more of his books with me for years and would talk to anyone who would listen to me about them.
For all the bad stuff he may or may not have done he did a lot of good as well and I still hold that scrawny little Frenchman in very high regard.
Doing it right should include some common sense, not just blindly following specs and instructions. .Gary D, AWAP on SB

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ScubaLawyer
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Tue Oct 17, 2017 1:12 pm

I was in France in August, 1997 about 2 months after the Captain passed away. I stopped in at the cemetery at Saint-André-de-Cubzac (just northeast of Bordeaux) and paid my respects at the Cousteau family crypt where he is interred. My wife and I had the good fortune to have dinner with him that previous January and were saddened to learn of his passing. Although frail in body, he seemed as vibrant and charismatic as ever. I told him of the amazing impact he had on my life and he smiled the biggest smile you have ever seen. Mark
Cousteau Grave.jpg
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"The diver who collects specimens of underwater life has fun and becomes a keen underwater observer. .. seek slow-moving or attached organisms such as corals, starfish, or shelled creatures." (Golden Guide to Scuba Diving, 1968) :D

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SurfLung
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Thu Oct 19, 2017 9:57 am

What's the Holdup on L'Odysey?
- The Cousteau biographical movie... I've seen the trailer and read some decent reviews. It was supposed to release in 2016. Can't find it anywhere to buy or rent.
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Vintage Diving Technique are Why I Got Back Into Diving.

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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Thu Oct 19, 2017 11:03 am

SurfLung wrote:What's the Holdup on L'Odysey?
- The Cousteau biographical movie... I've seen the trailer and read some decent reviews. It was supposed to release in 2016. Can't find it anywhere to buy or rent.
Don't know the answer to your question Eben, but if you are a Bill Murray fan (and not everyone is) Check out the movie, "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." You will either love it or hate it, but some of its parody of Captain Cousteau and how he made his films is pretty funny. Mark
"The diver who collects specimens of underwater life has fun and becomes a keen underwater observer. .. seek slow-moving or attached organisms such as corals, starfish, or shelled creatures." (Golden Guide to Scuba Diving, 1968) :D

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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Thu Oct 19, 2017 2:31 pm

It looks to me like it may be available for viewing on YouTube. Haven't tried it yet, however. Looks like you might have to download and pay for it to be streamed.

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SurfLung
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Thu Oct 19, 2017 4:14 pm

ScubaLawyer wrote:
Don't know the answer to your question Eben, but if you are a Bill Murray fan (and not everyone is) Check out the movie, "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." You will either love it or hate it, but some of its parody of Captain Cousteau and how he made his films is pretty funny. Mark
Oh Yeah... The Life Aquatic. That's one you have to watch more than once before you start liking it. It's like you have to realize it is a joke and then you have to "get" the joke! :)

For example, the ship was the Belafonte... Harry Belefonte sang Calypso music. I was surprised they were able to find an almost identical ship to the Calypso and us it for the movie. Underwater scenes are weird... Like they're shot with divers posing in the air and bubbles are edited in later. Some of the double hose regs looked real. All the sucking up to get funding was good satire on what it must have took to make it all possible.

No, the new movie looks like it might be good... Not satire. So far only the trailers/previews can be found on YouTube. Movie title is so much like The Cousteau Odysey TV show that a search turns up lots of TV episodes.
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Vintage Diving Technique are Why I Got Back Into Diving.

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ScubaLawyer
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Sun Oct 22, 2017 12:27 pm

Did a bit of research on Google. Looks like L'odysey was released on Blu-Ray in March, 2017 but only in the European version. In other words it won't play on US formatted Blu-ray players. At least that was a common comment I found.
"The diver who collects specimens of underwater life has fun and becomes a keen underwater observer. .. seek slow-moving or attached organisms such as corals, starfish, or shelled creatures." (Golden Guide to Scuba Diving, 1968) :D

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SurfLung
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Mon Oct 23, 2017 10:15 am

After logging in, I just spent a half hour writing about what I learned in "The Silent World". When I clicked "Submit" I was directed to log in again and I lost the whole half hour's work. I thought you'd want to know in case something needs to be fixed.
SurfLung
The Freedom and Simplicity of Vintage Equipment and
Vintage Diving Technique are Why I Got Back Into Diving.

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Ron
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Mon Oct 23, 2017 11:28 am

In the future, there are a few ways to mitigate a session timeout. This applies across the entire Internet, not just our site.

1.) If you want to write something long in a (pretty much any) forum, then copy and paste it into a text file or word file beforehand. Many forums and browsers have timeouts, so it's common for this to occur. If it times out, then start again, and just paste your content back in.

2.) 99.9 percent of the time, the browser itself caches (keeps a copy) of your text. If you hit submit, and it times out, just hit the back button. That should return you to the page before submission, where your text is still sitting. Then, open a new tab in your browser, log back into VDH, and then hit submit in the other tab where your text lives.

If that is too technical, just let me know and I can always break it down a little more. The short answer is that this is very common across many forums and various parts of the world wide web. Also, normally the website support forum is the place for this type of discussion, because I did just sort of happen to read this thread. This doesn't happen often, because you have to be logged in when you compose the message, but it has to time out while you are on that page typing. Time outs are generally handled by your forum software or your browser. It's not something I arbitrarily set for individual users, for example. Your time out isn't any different from mine.

If nothing else, write it in a text file and then paste it, that way you have a copy. Even LinkedIn times out, so I've done this before.

I hope that helps :)
The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed. -JYC

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SurfLung
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Mon Oct 23, 2017 5:47 pm

1943 to Early 50s...
- I've been reading The Silent World (the book not the movie) which I think was the first book Cousteau wrote. It actually goes back before 1943 and before the German invasion of France in 1942. I believe 1943 was the year the first Aqualung arrived. Prior to that, Cousteau and his dive buddies Dumas and Talliez were "goggle divers" searching for a way to stay down longer.
- They had tried the "Fernez" system with free flowing compressed air tank. They tried rebreathers. And they probably tried other systems. I am concluded that they paid a lot of dues to learn what a breathing free diver needed so that when Emil Gagnan entered the picture they could tell him exactly what they needed. Gagnan designed it to address those needs and so, when the first Aqualung arrived, it worked almost perfectly regardless of depth... A seemingly lucky break that took a lot of diving experiences to bring about.
- I am impressed at the ambition and courage of the early Cousteau group. They dove the heck out of those first few Aqualungs. They learned about decompression sickness and nitrogen narcosis while diving by the seat of their pants. They did wreck diving, DEEP diving, cave diving, cold water diving, clear water, cloudy water... Some of it was very dangerous and some seems even foolhardy but they pursued it all full throttle and paid a lot of dues... Those that came after Cousteau had some big shoulders to stand on.
- So, when I was reading about the 1960s Sea Lab starting at 200 feet deep and going right to 600 feet deep, I was surprised at how careful and cautious Cousteau's Conshelf program proceeded. Conshelf I was 1 week at 33 feet. Conshelf II was a month at 33 feet with a one week test habitat at 90 feet. Seems overly cautious doesn't it? But the 600 ft Sea Lab ended in tragedy and 400 ft Conshelf III was pulled off seemingly with remarkable ease. I'm thinking that Cousteau had perhaps already learned (the hard way) to proceed cautiously from the early days...For example,
- He nearly killed himself TWICE before he finally swore off oxygen rebreathers. And, his team nearly killed themselves TWICE before they stopped a cave diving expedition to finally figure out they were breathing carbon monoxide. Being the first to make a dangerous mistake is one thing... Getting back into the same ring a second time takes a lot of courage plus an overwhelming drive for answers. Cousteau DID eventually lose some of his divers in tragic accidents... And in those days he did the dangerous stuff right along side them and carried a heavy burden whenever an accident occurred. So, he came to the Conshelf program with a healthy respect for proceeding with caution.
- In the 1940s Cousteau and company dove a lot of "Firsts". In the 50s they had the Calypso and dove alot BIGGER firsts. I think the early 60s were the beginning of the end... They did the Conshelf habitats which were entirely successful and proved out safe methods of saturation diving. But I think they also showed that living in undersea houses was not going to be romantic, much less practical. I think the oil and military industries left Cousteau in the dust when they pursued extreme depths and lock-out saturation diving.
- Which brings me to the '70s, when I was 16-26 years old. I only knew the Cousteau that I saw in those beautiful TV shows. To me, Cousteau was all about the graceful flight of divers in warm, clear waters and futuristic diving gear. He embraced environmentalism and pitched his role of "Ambassador to the Sea". His TV shows were rather austentatious in this regard... from the opening, "Dedicated to All Those Who Fight to Protect Life"... or something like that... To hypocrytically condemning a red coral diver for doing what Cousteau and his divers enjoyed doing just a few years before. I fell for it all hook line and sinker. :)
SurfLung
The Freedom and Simplicity of Vintage Equipment and
Vintage Diving Technique are Why I Got Back Into Diving.

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SurfLung
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:23 pm

A Sad Ending...
- I just finished reading Brad Matsen's Book, The Sea King. It's interesting that it repeats a lot of the same stories as I read in the original Cousteau books, Silent World, Living Sea, etc.
- But the way the story has come to a close is both sad and a testimony to just how important Cousteau was to the success of Cousteau enterprises. The Mistress "Francine" seems to have manipulated the fragile mind of a very old man into leaving her in charge of everything. Shutting out his own son. She seems to have mismanaged everything into the ground including the Calypso and the Cousteau Society. So what's left? The Cousteau gravestone?
- One of the big things Matsen revealed is how much Cousteau relied on donations, grants, and big TV contracts to keep the organization running. They did one TV episode on studying the Mississippi river... Which Matsen said was hardly necessary due to it already being the most studied river in America. So, the scientific aspects of that episode were mostly for show. The pressure to package TV shows took precedence. And unlike the free spirited adventure of early Cousteau movies, the emphasis become more and more on gloom and doom environmental preaching. When the big network cancelled, he got another chance with PBS sponsored by ARCO oil. But a year of environmental shows and bad viewership and the ARCO guy bailed. He ended up with Ted Turned sponsoring a couple of more years of declining viewership before he bailed too.
- But Cousteau was still a Rock star. Matsen talks about how he went on a fund raising tour that played to packed stadiums across the country. Die hard fans with check books were throwing money at him. And that's what has me concluding that there was no way any body nor any organization could have replaced him and continued on. It all ran on Cousteau's exclusive charisma.
- There is one thing that Matsen didn't touch on: How much direct connection with the management of US Divers did Cousteau have. He supposedly was "Chairman of the board" but Matsen doesn't mention whether and how much he was paid as a salary or for his name on the patents from Aire Liquide. He was always connected with US Divers and the AquaLung name so I would think he must have made something from it. I read in the Historical Diving Magazine that Cousteau offered the presidency of US Divers to Henri Delause who turned it down to start COMEX. So, how much of US Divers did Cousteau actively control if he had the authority the hire the USD president?
SurfLung
The Freedom and Simplicity of Vintage Equipment and
Vintage Diving Technique are Why I Got Back Into Diving.

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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Sat Dec 23, 2017 2:05 pm

Surflung, I find your reviews of J.Y. Cousteau's early books interesting, suggest you Google James Dugan Who was Cousteau's American Rep. and writer behind the scenes on both books and Film,plus plus other books about Cousteau. I first met the Dugan's James and Ruth at the US premie of "The Silent World" film in NYC in 1956,haveing read the book in 1953, I kept in touch with the Dugan's until their passings, James 1967.Ruth 1995.

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TeamDoug2015
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Re: Early Years of Cousteau...

Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:01 pm

L'Odyssey released in France and Belgium and didn't do brilliantly at the box office. I haven't seen an English version which usually dooms foreign films to the obscure corners of Netflix. Hopefully it will hit the web soon.

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