The Silent World & The Pioneers of an Aquatic Revolution | Jacques Yves Cousteau / Frédéric Dumas / Émile Gagnan, 1943-53
‘Rocks covered with green, brown and silver forests of algae and fishes unknown to me, swimming
in crystalline water. Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed,
to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course. It happened
to me on that summer’s day, when my eyes were opened on the sea.”
Jacques Yves Cousteau, Frédéric Dumas, The Silent World, 1953
Jacques Yves Cousteau, 1954
“I swam across the rocks and compared myself favorably with the sars. To swim fishlike,
horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air.
To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream.
At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew
without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.)”
The Silent World, 1953
designed, built, and tested the first “aqua-lung” in the summer of 1943, off the southern coast of France.
In the opening chapters, Cousteau recounts the earliest days of scuba diving with his diving
companions Frédéric Dumas and Philippe Tailliez.
The aqualung allowed for the first time untethered, free-floating extended deep water diving,
and ushered in the modern era of scuba diving. Later chapters include excursions diving to shipwrecks.
The pioneers of an aquatic revolution: Jacques Yves Cousteau / Émile Gagnan
The first “aqua-lung” | Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Marseille, France, Summer 1943
“In the deep space of the sea I have found my moon.”
“When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life,
he has no right to keep it to himself.”
Jacques Yves Cousteau, 1910-1997
Jacques-Yves Cousteau adjusts 10-year-old son Jean-Michel’s aqualung before a dive into
the Mediterranean Sea off Sanary-sur-Mer, France in 1953
“During the summer of Liberation I came home from Paris with two miniature aqualungs for my sons, Jean-Michel, then seven, and Philippe, five. The older boy was learning to swim but the younger had only been wading. I was confident that they would take to diving, since one does not need to be a swimmer to go down with the apparatus. The eyes and nose are dry inside the mask, breathing comes automatically and the clumsiest kick will do for locomotion.”
Jacques Yves Cousteau, Frédéric Dumas, The Silent World, 1953
The Silent World (Le monde du silence), Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle (1956)
The Silent World is noted as one of the first films to use underwater cinematography to show
the ocean depths in color.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH4RCiGBPwM
Braen / Octopus / Biologia Marina / 1973
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