“My father pushed me overboard when I was seven,” said Jean-Michel, president of the local Ocean Futures Society, a non-profit organization committed to saving wild places. “In those days, kids didn’t argue with their parents. I became an instant scuba diver with my late brother. As a family, we began discovering the south of France.”

Curiosity, adventure and discovery shaped his father’s life, and those characteristics and interests were reinforced his sons. Jean-Michel said his father was very determined, and that nothing stopped him. If a piece of equipment was needed but didn’t exist, his father invented it. However, as driven as his father was, it was his mother Simone, and her low-key approach that fueled much of the family’s success, he said. “The typical cliché is a strong woman behind a famous person,” said Jean-Michel. “That was my mother. I don’t think he (Jacques) would’ve gone as far or accomplished as much without her.” She may have stayed behind the scenes and didn’t want to be on film, her son said, but she called the shots. While the Cousteaus explored the Amazon in1982 and 1983, Simone spent more time on the ship than the rest of the family combined. “She spent 10 months on the ship without getting off,” said Jean-Michel. “I don’t know anyone who would've done that,” he recalled. “She was the real captain. It comes from the fact that she descended from many generations of naval officers. She wanted to be in the navy, but in those days women weren’t allowed.”

When it came to Jacques Cousteau’s vision and discoveries on the many global expeditions aboard the Calypso, the younger Cousteau found his father to be very demanding, but for good reason. Not only was Jacques his father, he said, also his friend and boss. Sometimes the roles were difficult for the two to juggle, but they always managed, said Jean-Michel. “When we had breakfast together I felt like I was with the president or prime minister,” said Cousteau. “We argued about all kinds of things like we should, and then we walked out of there with a plan.”

Ocean Futures Society

Jacques Cousteau died in 1997, but his legacy lives on in the Ocean Futures Society, a global organization created in 1999, under the direction of Jean-Michel, which is spreading the word actively about the environmental plight facing the planet. Cousteau’s son started the organization to honor the memory of his late father, realizing that if he didn’t grab the reins there would bed no one to continue and perpetuate his father’s mission.

“I worked with him most of my life,” said Cousteau. “He had a vision, then suddenly he’s gone. He didn’t give me any indication that it would continue unless I did something about it. We [Ocean Futures Society] want to be the voice of the ocean.” Ocean Futures Society lives by its motto, “Protect the ocean and you
protect yourself.”

However, protecting this vital resource is a massive uphill battle against a mounting world population, greed and ignorance. For centuries, the ocean has been the world’s garbage dump with waste originating in the mountains, farms, and towns, flowing down creeks and rivers and eventually reaching the ocean. Cousteau said there are over 100 dead zones, virtual wastelands, in the oceans where there were once thriving habitats. Now nothing lives there. These oxygen-deprived regions resulted from chemicals like DDT, nitrogen runoff from fertilizers, oil spills, lead and mercury that have ended up in the ocean. Marine life either succumbs to the pollution or moves on to healthier waters.

“We continue to use the ocean as a garbage can, a universal sewer,” Cousteau said. “So our infrastructure is wrong since day one, and it’s a huge headache. Anyone that’s aware of it and wants to correct it, that’s very, very difficult. From an economical point of view, it’s a total nightmare.” The world’s largest known dead zone is in the Gulf of Mexico. Cousteau was aware of it in 1982 while doing a presentation in Mississippi. Since then it has doubled in size, and is now as large as the state of Pennsylvania. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina it will continue to grow.

As bleak as this all sounds, Cousteau is confident the pendulum can swing the other way by specifically targeting the world’s youth, taking teachers and students out of schools and introducing them to nature. Currently, Cousteau has a total of 11 educational sites in California, Hawaii, French Polynesia, France, the Caiman Islands, the Caribbean and the British Virgin Islands. Next year sites in Italy, Greece, Brazil, and possibly Florida will be added. In these educational settings, the relationship between the land and the ocean is made extremely clear to young students.

The programs works to instill self-confidence and teamwork in participants and problem solving with logic is taught and modeled. Materials are provided in local languages. Instead of Cousteau making appearing and teaching in classrooms, local teachers and other well-known local figures from each country teach the lessons. After the units are completed, Ocean Futures Society utilizes feedback to enhance and modify its future programs. “We can take a kid out of downtown L.A. who has never seen the
ocean — believe me there’re a lot of them,” said Cousteau, “and in three days we make a swimmer, snorkeling at night.”

Ocean Futures has another another program that involves sustainable coral reefs, 85 percent of which are located in third world countries. Its goal is to expand the understanding of how coral reefs work, and Cousteau mentioned the Bahamas as an example. The Caribbean country’s maximum altitude on 95-98 percent of the islands is 10 feet above sea level. Without a barrier of coral reefs surrounding the chain, the islets would be exposed to storms, tsunamis and hurricanes, which would wash the tiny nation away.

Cousteau said the most important aspect of the coral reefs project involves economics. Nearly all countries bordered by coral reefs rely on coral as a resource — for export and for tourism. It provides for up to 90 percent of the economy of some of these countries. “Destroy your reefs and no one will show up again,” he said. “If you go to a place that’s been trashed, you’re not going to go back.”

Blue Pacific

One ocean that isn't completely trashed and is of special concern to Cousteau is the Pacific, “because its such a huge place and we know so little about it,” he said. However, Cousteau, working in conjunction with the National Marine Sanctuaries and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is in the process of converting one of the most biologically diverse regions of the Pacific into the largest marine sanctuary in America. The proposed sanctuary would begin in the Hawaiian Islands at Kauai and cover the sea for 1200 miles northwest to Kure, the northernmost tropical atoll on the planet.

Characterized by massive sea mounts teeming with marine life, remote atolls and endangered species like monk seals and green sea turtles, it’s one of the most unique chain of islands in the world, and is almost as large as the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. “There are species of endemic fish and corals that we don’t even know about,” stated Cousteau. “It's a legacy we can pass onto the next generation.”