MONTY: Reconsidering the legacy of Cousteau

It has become my tradition in recent years to flee to warmer climes as soon as winter rears its ugly head. This year, watching streets awash with flooded storm drains, and hunched figures striding grimly to work inside-out umbrellas held before them as they manoeuvre along slate-grey streets, the urge to migrate was even stronger than normal. Our little rocky island has trembled in the face of numerous Atlantic storms, so this particular diver decided that enough was enough.

My recent venue of choice was Sudan, aboard Tony Backhurst’s Royal Emperor. This trip had too many bonuses to mention: beautiful weather, a lovely bunch of fellow divers (always a gamble with any liveaboard trip), a fine vessel with a terrific crew, and – best of all – an Aussie dive guide called JCS. The benefit of the latter was not only that he was splendidly competent, he also came from an it’s-not-the-winning-it’s-the-taking-part-we’re-not-chippy-about-losing-to-England-at-all nation that we had recently beaten in the Rugby World Cup. And I had him for a complete week, an entirely captive Australian. His only way to avoid the sly digs and cheap shots would have been to swim for it, an idea I believe he was considering fairly seriously by Wednesday. Anyway – top boat, top site, top guide, top week.

One of the undoubted highlights was diving Cousteau’s Conshelf at Shaab Rumi. To prepare us for this dive, JCS put on the film Cousteau had made about the project – amazing stuff. Inspired, I watched a few more of his films, and as I did so a truth slowly dawned.

There is a trend nowadays to slag off Cousteau – I’ve done it myself in lectures, taking cheap shots at an icon. He certainly had a habit of relentless self-promotion (I’m aware of the irony of that statement, by the way), and a relaxed approach to the personal space of large marine animals (I’m aware of the irony of that statement too). His approach to conservation was also fairly dismissive, with the odd reef dynamited here and there, and a few fish sacrificed on the altar of a good bit of footage (shark-feeding was absolutely standard, as was placing small fish in the path of larger ones). I had settled into a mindset of expecting very little from Cousteau – a series of sensationalist and quirky images from another time, when every shark was a killer and every passing diver was trapped by the ankle in a giant clam.

And yet, this man was a genuine pioneer, a visionary, undertaking expeditions and individual dives that required immense courage, as well as state-of-the-art technology and impeccable planning. Perhaps the best way to put it is to imagine the dive briefings... ‘Right mes amis, the next dive is the Britannic. It’s at 120m, and you’ll be doing it with three cylinders on your back, only one reg, and no BC. Oh, and Falco, you’ll be carrying a light rig the size of the floodlights at Wembley Stadium. There’s also a free swim when you get to the bell at 30m, requiring you to shrug off your gear and breaststroke several metres in open water before squeezing through a tiny hatch.

There, we will wait to be winched to the surface, all the while singing stirring French songs. Any questions?’

Cousteau is rightly revered as the start of it all, diving royalty who achieved the most extraordinary things. At the height of his fame, the entire globe was gripped by the undersea world and the exploits of his team – diving had a profile never achieved before or since. We divers have a habit of getting stuck into Cousteau nowadays, but let’s not forget his remarkable adventures, and the seed he sowed in so many young minds – he certainly created an image of diving exploration in me that has never, ever faded.

In short, Cousteau was an amazing man, and if you haven’t watched his films for a while, I simply can’t think of a better way of spending a club night. The only rule is that you all have to wear overly tight Speedos and red bobble hats, smoking pipes throughout.