Jacques-Yves Cousteau

JacquesYves Cousteau AC 11 June 1910  25 June 1997 was a French naval officer oceanographer scientist inventor filmmaker photographer innovator conservationist author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water He coinvented the first successful opencircuit selfcontained underwater breathing apparatus SCUBA called the AquaLung which assisted him in producing some of the first underwater documentaries He also pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française From 1966 to 1976 he hosted The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau a documentary television series presented on American commercial television stations A second documentary series The Cousteau Odyssey ran from 1977 to 1982 on public television stations In his first book The Silent World A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure he surmised the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises The book was adapted into an underwater documentary called The Silent World Codirected by Cousteau and Louis Malle it was one of the first films to use underwater cinematography to document the ocean depths in color The film won the 1956 Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival and remained the only documentary to do so until 2004 when Fahrenheit 911 received the award It was also awarded the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1957 From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia