JACQUES COUSTEAUThe Cousteau Society“Custodians of the Sea

Since 1943”

“The more we divedwith the aqualung themore we feared a sudden disaster.”Cousteau

The story of the Aqua-Lung goes back to World War II. In 1942, on a small beach of the Riviera, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, wearing rubber fins, shouldered the new completely autonomous diving gear.

During the war, Engineer Emile Gagnon invented a demand regulator that would feed cooking gas to a car’s carburetor in the exact amount the jet needed.

In 1943, Cousteau and Gagnon modified the first modern demand regulator. Cousteau makes it the crowning piece of his Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA), the Aqua-Lung.

In Malta, Cousteau discovered Calypso, a former Royal Navy mine-sweeper. The sale contract was signed on July 19, 1950. Calypso left immediately for the shipyard in Antibes, France, where she was transformed into an oceanographic ship. One of her many innovations was the underwater observation chamber built around the prow and equipped with eight portholes for viewing.

Calypso is known throughout the world and sailed the ocean planet for nearly half a century to reveal its beauty and fragility. She is the symbol of human

hopes to understand Nature, the better to protect it.

“People will protect what they love.”

The Undersea Worldof Jacques Cousteau

Mission 31