5 Things You Didn't Know About Jacques Cousteau

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Jacques Cousteau

by Ethan Trex - April 2, 2010 - 2:00 PM

French naval officer, explorer, and filmmaker Jacques-Yves Cousteau helped millions of people learn about what goes on under the ocean’s surface. How well do you know the man in the wetsuit, though? Let’s take a look at five things you might not have known about the master of the deep.

1. He Originally Wanted to Fly

When Cousteau was a young man he joined the French navy, but he never had any intention of going underwater as part of his service. Instead, Cousteau planned on becoming a naval aviator, but that dreamed died when Cousteau was in a serious auto accident in 1936. The young pilot borrowed his father’s Salmson sports car to attend a wedding and had a horrific crash when the headlights shorted out on a dark road. Cousteau was so severely injured in the accident that it seemed like resuming his pilot’s training was impossible.Cousteau needed a way to rehab and strengthen his broken arms, though, so he took to swimming in the ocean. Later that year, Cousteau made his first underwater swim in goggles, and he realized that he’d found his calling.

2. He Had a Secret Family

Soon after Cousteau discovered his love of the undersea world, he also declared his love for Simone Melchior. The couple married in 1937, and Simone was never in the shadows of Jacques’ life. She went along on expeditions on his ship Calypso, helped him secure financing for his projects, and even sold her family jewels to help buy fuel for the ship. Simone took such good care of Calypso’s crew that they nicknamed her “La Bergere,” or “the Shepherdess.”
Quite a storybook romance, right? You can imagine how surprising it was when Jacques announced in 1991 that he not only had a mistress, he had an entire secret family. One year after Simone’s death from cancer, Cousteau told the world that he had been having a long affair with Francine Triplet, who was over thirty years his junior. Cousteau also announced he had two secret children from the affair. He later married Triplet.

3. He Probably Wanted You to Drink Guinness

Cousteau’s famed ship Calypso got its start as a British minesweeper during World War II, and after the conflict ended she became a ferry in Malta. In 1950 Irish millionaire Thomas Loel Guinness, a descendant of the storied brewing family, bought the ship. Guinness didn’t hang onto the ship for long, though. He leased her to Cousteau for a pretty sweet deal: one franc a year.
The ship has had a bit of a rough time since Cousteau made it famous. In January 1996, Calypso was in Singapore when a barge accidentally rammed her. The ship sank and had to be pulled from the water by crane for extensive restoration. Following Cousteau’s 1997 death, the two wings of his family fought a bitter battle over the future of the ship. At the moment, it’s still being restored, a pricey endeavor.

4. He Buddied Up with Castro

In 1985, Cousteau and his crew ventured to Cuba to research the country’s unique system for managing its lobster population. While there, Cousteau received Fidel Castro on his ship for dinner. Castro seemed to take a liking to Cousteau; the dictator allowed the diver to liberate 80 political prisoners. Cousteau and his team also received another unique honor: they became the first non-Cubans to pass through the gate of the U.S. Navy’s Guantanamo Bay installation since the Cuban missile crisis 24 years earlier.

5. He Wanted Waterworld to Become a Reality

Cousteau may have co-invented the Aqua-Lung and become one of history’s most famous divers, but he dreamed of his creation one day becoming optional. In a 1960 interview with Time, Cousteau predicted that in the future, medical science would advance to the point where men could surgically be given gills that would enable them to live underwater. Cousteau figured if that surgery could be perfected, so could a follow-up procedure that would remove the gills and enable normal life back on land. He told the magazine, “Everything that has been done on the surface will sooner or later be done under water. It will be the conquest of a whole new world.”

Original from:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/51762#more-51762

Instructor Questions

Why can you dive for such a long period of time with a re-breather?

That is a great question! As you may know rebreathers have one or two small tanks of compressed gas. The re-breathers have this small gas supply because like the name says you rebreathe the same gas over and over. The trick is that the CO2 is removed and oxygen added as needed.

To explain this you have to take a look at the human respiratory system. An average breath admits about 350 ml of new air to the mix of air in our lungs already (about 2500 ml). This air in our lungs is composed of oxygen, nitrogen , carbon dioxide and water.

Oxygen diffuses from the air in the lung to the circulatory system and then into the cells where it is used in oxidation of carbohydrates (we will call this metabolism). This results in the release of CO2 and energy.

Carbon dioxide, CO2, diffuses from the cell to the circulatory sytem and then to the lung. Here through respiration the body is rid of excess CO2 and water.

So how does a re-breather work?
It has a closed circuit loop where no volume of gas is lost (like when we breath out on open circuit, the bubbles float up). A large portion of the gas breathed out continues to have oxygen in it.

The CO2 is filtered out with a CO2 scrubber material. The water is trapped at a low point in the loop. The oxygen is sent back to be breathed again.

So you are asking, isn't the oxygen level going down as it is used in metabolism? Yes, indeed it is. The beauty of the re-breather is that more oxygen is added as needed! This is a very small amount as we breath 21% O2 and our supply is 100% oxygen! Think of it as getting almost 5 times as much as you would use in a similar sized air (21%) cylinder of gas.

You can adjust the mix you breath during the dive if you desire. You will continue to accumulate nitrogen, but this is dependent on the mix you breath. It is like having an adjustable nitrox tank. Even better, you can dive trimix if you have the equipment and are trained.

So decompression will have to be done just like on open circuit.

Next question. Do you produce more carbon dioxide the deeper you go?

Another good question! The simple answer is that CO2 production is a byproduct of metabolism. Not of depth or more accurately with higher PCO2.

But, as you dive deeper your body is working harder, if doing nothing other than breathing as the gases become more dense with an increase in partial pressure.

More work equals more metabolism. More metabolism equals more CO2 production.

The quandry with CO2 is that an excess can lead to bad things. Things like shortness of breath, headache, difficulty concentrating and eventually to unconsciousness!

Last question. Do you use gas four times as fast at 4 ata in a closed circuit system as you do in a open circuit system?

The simple answer is that what ever system you are on be it open circuit or closed, as the absolute pressure increases, the volume of gas decreases. (once it comes out of the cylinder)

Since you your lung capacity does not vary with depth or pressure, you still have to fill the lung up with each breath.

So for instance, if you breath .5 cubic feet of air per minute on the surface you will breath 1 cubic foot at 2 ata, 1.5 cubic feet at 3 ata and 2 cubic feet at 4 ata.

The lung capacity remains the same but the volume of gas you inhale decreases (as pressure increases volume decreases... some gas law that escapes me) so that the volume on the surface is not enogh to fill that lung if that gas gets compressed. You must have more gas to create the same size as that on the surface to fill the lung.

It does not matter if you are on closed circuit or open circuit. If you go deeper, you use more gas.

If this is not clear please let me know. I will be happy to explain futher if I am able!

Dive & Survive: Extreme Sports Call For Extreme Measures

Tyler Paper - Tyler Morning Telegraph

Dive & Survive: Extreme Sports Call For Extreme Measures

Sunday, August 09, 2009

By MAEGAN McGOWEN

Feature Writer

The familiar smell of chlorine hits you as you walk through the locker rooms to the indoor pool at Tyler Junior College.

Distorted figures of divers move slowly around the bottom of the pool, their yellow-and-black flippers creating ripples across the surface of the water.

An instructor with Scuba Steve’s Aquatic Adventures leads a first-time scuba diver on a dive at the Tyler Junior College Ornelas Health and Physical Education Center in Tyler.

Bubbles bounced up through the water as divers practiced their skills, and Steve Lockhart, owner of Scuba Steve's, explained how his love affair with diving began.Decked out in regulators, masks and air tanks, scuba students line the edges of the pool while Laura Lockhart, diving instructor for Scuba Steve's Aquatic Adventures, explains the importance of equalizing the pressure in your ears under water.

"I was Scuba Steve 20 years before Adam Sandler put him in the movies," he laughed. "Everybody laughs about the name, but we get noticed!"

Steve runs a full-service dive shop in Tyler offering classes including open water, advanced, rescue, dive master, specialty and technical classes, as well as the Try Scuba classes, offered free of charge and taught in conjunction with Tyler Junior College's continuing education program.

"I've got four instructors and myself here tonight," he said, pointing them out. "We keep a low student-to-instructor ratio. Tonight, we have everything from "Try Scuba" to the third week of a class to certify divers. We do upwards of 400 certifications per year."

Steve's own experience with diving began more than 30 years ago.

"The first time I was offshore, I had an uncle who was a diver and he said, 'Do what I do,' so I went, I survived, and I was hooked."

He never dreamed he would teach the extreme sport, but with a little encouragement from his wife, Laura, he found he had the patience for teaching after all.

"I found out how rewarding it was to see people deathly afraid of the water become confident," he said. "If we could do this for free, I would."

Teaching scuba requires a lot of patience, he said, but the end result is confident, safe divers.

"I've had people in this class, grown men, who cried because they didn't know how to swim," he said. "Now I'd dive with them anywhere. I've had abused women who took the class to get over their fear of water. I've met so many people from all walks of life."

At Scuba Steve's, students start with basic equipment, keeping everything simple.

"If you're confident in your student's ability, then they will have the confidence to tackle bigger and bigger feats," he said. "In the thousands of people we've trained, I can only think of two or three who didn't complete the course. Our success rate is very high."

The hardest lesson to teach, he said, is that no one can defeat the water.

"If they fight the water, it will win every time," he said. "They have to become the water, and once they do, everything comes together. A good diver is a person who accepts the fact that we are all equal in the water -- you're only as good as the next person who can help you out in a bad situation."

Steve's diving program is comparatively old fashioned, and everything is done by the book.

"It's four weeks long, and I won't cut corners," he said. "We furnish every piece of equipment. At the end of four weeks, if the student is ready, and if we feel they are ready, we do an open water evaluation, reviewing everything they've done in their class, and at that point. If they pass, they are certified."

There are two rules at Scuba Steve's -- to be safe and to have fun.

"If number one doesn't happen, then number two isn't going to happen," he said.

But if they do happen, in the right order, they can dive to places most people only dream about.

"If you don't believe in God, take up scuba," he said. "Then you'll believe. It's a whole world a very limited part of the population gets to see. It's creation like you've never seen."

Destiny Kafka and Danielle Taylor, both of Bullard, listen to instructor Mike Jeter, of Whitehouse, during a lesson.
(Staff Photos By Tom Turner)

http://www.tylerpaper.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090809/FEATURES01/908070345