Nine things you might not know about Jacques Cousteau

For any diver, Jacques Cousteau is a hero. He perfected the open circuit breathing apparatus we all learned to dive with, and he brought the oceans and sea life into our living rooms in glorious colour.

But you may not know that:

1/ His Christian name was actually Jacques-Yves. He dropped the second part to make life easier for English speaking audiences.

2/ His famous boat Calypso was rammed and sunk in a Singapore harbour, but was eventually refloated is now being restored as a museum.

3/ He starred in 120 television documentaries and wrote 50 books during his lifetime.

4/ Despite France being occupied by Germany during the second world war, Cousteau, as a naval officer, constantly sought to help the French navy join with the allies, and he lead a commando operation against Italian spies which resulted in him receiving several decorations.

5/ He actually leased Calypso for the princely sum of 1 Franc per year from owner Thomas Guinness.

6/ He discovered that Dolphins used sonar to navigate after observing their behaviour in the Mediterranean.

7/ He was an advisor to the US National Acamedy of Sciences during their pioneering work on saturation diving in the 1950’s.

8/ It was Cousteau and his team who discovered the wreck of Britannic, Titanic’s sister ship, at 120 Meters off the coast of Greece.

9/ He died in Paris in 1997 at the age of 87, but his legacy lives on in the form of his body of work and The Cousteau Society.

Was he one of your diving insiprations?