Jacques-Yves Cousteau

UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1991 by Bahgat Elnadi, Adel Rifaat

* Then came the great success of your film The Silent World. . .

-- The Silent World dates from 1956. The first Calypso expeditions, in the Red Sea, go back to 1951. We had already made some quite remarkable films, one of which won the Grand Prix at the Paris documentary film festival in 1951. We were making colour films as far back as 1953. Things were very difficult in those early days. Water tends to absorb colours and we had many lighting problems. We did a lot of work on the development of camera techniques, filters, optical and lighting systems, and so on. Gradually we were able to start using video up to professional standards, initially in black and white.

Around that time I constructed the first French underwater television cameras. Later, at Marseilles, I created the Centre d'Etudes Marines Avancees. It was at Marseilles that we built the first submarine for exploration, specially designed to carry out scientific observation at a depth of 350 metres. Then, for the French State, we made an observation submarine capable of going to a depth of 3,000 metres and, for the Americans, a third submarine capable of operating at 600 metres. I also built two one-man pocket submarines which are still in working order today. Finally we began to build a bigger submarine from which divers could emerge. When the hull was finished work had to stop because we had no more money. That's how things stand today, twenty years later.

In 1954 we carried out a mission for the Darcy Exploration Company. We had a very good contract which enabled us to install the radar and measuring equipment we lacked. We were the people who discovered oil in the Gulf! It was us who made the emirate of Abu Dhabi rich!

The Silent World brought in enough money to finance our work until 1972, virtually without any other source of income.

Since then we have made many films. In 1962 we also carried out experiments in which men lived and worked underwater at considerable depths. The first of these, known as Conshelf I, was carried out at Marseilles. Then came Conshelf II, in the Red Sea, and finally in 1964, Conshelf III off Cap Ferrat.

* How were these experiments carried out?

-- We used a spherical vessel within which the atmosphere, consisting of a mixture of oxygen and helium, was maintained at the surrounding water pressure. Six people lived in the sphere for three weeks, and when they emerged it took another week to gradually decompress them.

With this experiment we became the first people to do what is known as saturation diving. Since then, the offshore oil industry has gone in for this in a big way.

We made innovations in a wide variety of fields. We developed cameras which we have used as far down as 8,000 metres.

We have taken thousands of photos and made extraordinary films in a number of Atlantic trenches. We were also the first to dive in the Antarctic with a submarine and to carry out systematic exploration there in diving gear. We recently made the first diving equipment using plastic bottles filled to a pressure of 300 bars.