Next spring, Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the legendary Jacques, will
lead a 31-day mission, living in an underwater lab and exploring the
mysteries of the deep. And you're invited to come along.
Half a dozen half-naked men are sitting around, talking, drinking,
and smoking in Starfish House, 33 feet below the surface of the Red Sea.
It's 1963. Among them is ocean explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau -- still
clad in his silver diving suit -- commandant of the first undersea
village.
That scene comes early on in "World Without Sun," the Oscar-winning documentary released in 1964. It provided moviegoers with a window into the underwater world of oceanauts living and working for a month in "inner space."
Now, 50 years later, Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the famed ocean explorer, is planning a similar expedition but going deeper and one day longer. And you won't have to wait for the movie to come out -- you can watch Mission 31 unfold in real time.
Next spring, Cousteau and five others will dive down to Aquarius Reef Base, an undersea lab 63 feet down in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. They plan to make the school-bus-size lab their home for 31 days, while exploring the deep and conducting scientific research (yes, there's a documentary in the works) -- all the while broadcasting the mission live.
"We're in a whole new generation," said Cousteau, 46, a filmmaker and
ocean explorer like his grandfather. During the last half of the 20th
century, film and TV audiences became immersed in the undersea world of
Jacques Cousteau, who was 87 when he died in 1997. "The Internet was in
its nascent stage at the end of his life, so he never got a chance to
reach out through that medium," he said.
Though time has advanced and so has technology, one thing hasn't changed much. "The reality is that we've explored less than 5 percent of our ocean to date," Cousteau said. So there are still a lot of stories to tell, and discoveries and adventures to be had, he said. "In essence we're hoping to continue on where my grandfather left off."
But it's not just by symbolically going deeper and one day longer than the 1963 expedition, he said. "There's a human-ocean connection that hadn't really been fathomed -- or certainly not enough -- that we need to emphasize now."
During the expedition, the aquanauts will conduct scientific research on how climate change, overconsumption, and pollution are affecting the health of the ocean. The aquanauts themselves will become specimens too, participating in experiments on the physiological and psychological effects of living under the sea -- and without sun -- for a month.
Immersion program
Cousteau describes Mission 31 as "an underwater classroom," where he and his team will share their discoveries with viewers -- through daily Skype video calls with students around the world, live reports on the Weather Channel, and real-time updates on social media.
"I think there's a way to wow today's generation in a way that [my grandfather] did, maybe by engaging them in a more real-time sort of way with more alternative kind of media," he said.
The 50th anniversary of his grandfather's experiment in undersea living, known as Conshelf Two, comes at an opportune time for updating our knowledge too, he said.
And he has a couple of decades' worth of firsthand knowledge to draw on. Cousteau grew up on the decks of the Calypso and Alcyone, the ships that transported his grandfather and crew on many of their expeditions.
"You go to the Florida Keys, for example, and it's a shadow of its former self," he said. But take someone, say a 12-year-old, diving in that area for the first time? "They've never seen how it was, how it was supposed to be, which is this fireworks display of life that I grew up with, when I was 12 years old."
The point of Mission 31 is more than going deeper and longer than Conshelf Two. "We're also showing the wonders of the undersea world in a way that most people will never get a chance to see," Cousteau said.
In October, an international panel of marine scientists released a report saying that increased carbon emissions have led to a "deadly trio"
that threatens the world's oceans: waters are acidifying, warming, and
losing oxygen. Pollution and overfishing are adding to the stress too.
And things are worse than previously believed.
"The health of the ocean is spiraling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought," Alex Rogers, scientific director of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, said in a statement. "The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth."
The findings go beyond even the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that preceded it by a week, which said that the ocean is bearing the brunt of global warming.
Daily life in the deep
In addition to the mysteries of the underwater world, viewers may find life inside Aquarius just as compelling. What happens when you pack six people who don't know each other well into a school-bus-size space for a month? Aquarius, the world's only operating undersea lab, is about 43 feet long and about 9 feet wide inside. There are six bunks, a shower and toilet, hot water, a refrigerator, a microwave, air conditioning, and an Internet connection. The longest mission Aquarius has hosted was 18 days, with a typical mission lasting about 10 days.
Cousteau has assembled a team of people with science and engineering backgrounds, three women and three men, ranging in age from 19 to 46. For most of his team, including Cousteau, it'll be a new experience living as saturation divers, enabling them to stay underwater for the length of the mission. The 1963 expedition in part was an early, successful effort in saturation diving -- a technique that allows divers to safely explore the deep for a much longer period of time compared with surface-based diving.
Fabien Cousteau (pictured) is planning an
undersea living expedition similar to one his famed grandfather
undertook in 1963, but going deeper and one day longer. The Aquarius lab
will be home base for 31 days.
(Credit:
Kip Evans/Mission Blue)
That scene comes early on in "World Without Sun," the Oscar-winning documentary released in 1964. It provided moviegoers with a window into the underwater world of oceanauts living and working for a month in "inner space."
Now, 50 years later, Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the famed ocean explorer, is planning a similar expedition but going deeper and one day longer. And you won't have to wait for the movie to come out -- you can watch Mission 31 unfold in real time.
Next spring, Cousteau and five others will dive down to Aquarius Reef Base, an undersea lab 63 feet down in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. They plan to make the school-bus-size lab their home for 31 days, while exploring the deep and conducting scientific research (yes, there's a documentary in the works) -- all the while broadcasting the mission live.
Fabien Cousteau on his grandfather's shoulders in 1970.
Though time has advanced and so has technology, one thing hasn't changed much. "The reality is that we've explored less than 5 percent of our ocean to date," Cousteau said. So there are still a lot of stories to tell, and discoveries and adventures to be had, he said. "In essence we're hoping to continue on where my grandfather left off."
But it's not just by symbolically going deeper and one day longer than the 1963 expedition, he said. "There's a human-ocean connection that hadn't really been fathomed -- or certainly not enough -- that we need to emphasize now."
During the expedition, the aquanauts will conduct scientific research on how climate change, overconsumption, and pollution are affecting the health of the ocean. The aquanauts themselves will become specimens too, participating in experiments on the physiological and psychological effects of living under the sea -- and without sun -- for a month.
Immersion program
Cousteau describes Mission 31 as "an underwater classroom," where he and his team will share their discoveries with viewers -- through daily Skype video calls with students around the world, live reports on the Weather Channel, and real-time updates on social media.
"I think there's a way to wow today's generation in a way that [my grandfather] did, maybe by engaging them in a more real-time sort of way with more alternative kind of media," he said.
The 50th anniversary of his grandfather's experiment in undersea living, known as Conshelf Two, comes at an opportune time for updating our knowledge too, he said.
We're also showing the wonders of the undersea world in a way that most people will never get a chance to see."
-- Fabien Cousteau
Get Cousteau talking about the changes he's witnessed during his time in and around the ocean and he'll take an Aquaman-like
dive into the scientific research as well. Caused "just by the actions
of one species," the changes are both fascinating and scary, he said.
-- Fabien Cousteau
And he has a couple of decades' worth of firsthand knowledge to draw on. Cousteau grew up on the decks of the Calypso and Alcyone, the ships that transported his grandfather and crew on many of their expeditions.
"You go to the Florida Keys, for example, and it's a shadow of its former self," he said. But take someone, say a 12-year-old, diving in that area for the first time? "They've never seen how it was, how it was supposed to be, which is this fireworks display of life that I grew up with, when I was 12 years old."
The point of Mission 31 is more than going deeper and longer than Conshelf Two. "We're also showing the wonders of the undersea world in a way that most people will never get a chance to see," Cousteau said.
Fabien Cousteau describes Mission 31 as 'an
underwater classroom,' where he and his team will share their
discoveries with viewers in real time.
"The health of the ocean is spiraling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought," Alex Rogers, scientific director of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, said in a statement. "The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth."
The findings go beyond even the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that preceded it by a week, which said that the ocean is bearing the brunt of global warming.
Daily life in the deep
In addition to the mysteries of the underwater world, viewers may find life inside Aquarius just as compelling. What happens when you pack six people who don't know each other well into a school-bus-size space for a month? Aquarius, the world's only operating undersea lab, is about 43 feet long and about 9 feet wide inside. There are six bunks, a shower and toilet, hot water, a refrigerator, a microwave, air conditioning, and an Internet connection. The longest mission Aquarius has hosted was 18 days, with a typical mission lasting about 10 days.
Cousteau has assembled a team of people with science and engineering backgrounds, three women and three men, ranging in age from 19 to 46. For most of his team, including Cousteau, it'll be a new experience living as saturation divers, enabling them to stay underwater for the length of the mission. The 1963 expedition in part was an early, successful effort in saturation diving -- a technique that allows divers to safely explore the deep for a much longer period of time compared with surface-based diving.
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