| Jean-Michel Cousteau | |
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Cousteau (right) with wife Nancy Marr, December 2007 |
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| Born | 1938 |
Jean-Michel Cousteau (born 1938) is a French explorer, environmentalist, educator, and film producer. The first son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, he is the father of Fabien Cousteau and Celine Cousteau.
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Cousteau is the son of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Simone Melchior. Cousteau first dived with an aqua-lung in 1945 when he was 7 years old. Although he went to school to study architecture,[1] he became part of his father's Cousteau Society, serving for twenty years as executive vice president before striking out on his own in 1993 to produce environmental films.[2][3][4] Cousteau and his father had disagreed about the management and policies of the Society.[5]
After Cousteau opened a resort on a Fiji Island utilizing the family name, Jacques-Yves Cousteau filed a lawsuit against him in 1995.[4] In June 1996, a court signed an injunction requiring him to add, with equal prominence in placement, his first name to the hotel.[3] Jean-Michel then founded the Ocean Futures Society in 1999, a marine conservation and education organization which fosters a conservation ethic, conducts research, and develops marine education programs. In 2003, Francesca Sorrenti and Marisha Shibuya of the SKe GROUP project, in partnership with Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society, collaborated to produce Water Culture, a Trolley Books publication featuring a wide variety of photographer's water related imagery and interviews with prominent world personalities on the problems facing our water supply.[6] Cousteau is also Chairman of Green Cross France.
Jean-Michel Cousteau is also working on a documentary highlighting the epic and disastrous 2010 Gulf Oil Spill in which 11 workers were killed during an explosion of the Deepwater Rig 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana.
He has produced over 70 films.[7]
He appeared on a documentary-type special feature on the DVD version of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in which he and Stephen Hillenburg talk about all of the real-life counterparts to the sea creatures seen in the cartoon series and the movie and even some that are not in the movie. He did a similar feature for the DVD of the Disney/Pixar movie Finding Nemo.
Jean-Michel Cousteau made a new documentary series Ocean Adventures[8] released in 2006.
In Disney's DVD release of the Pixar film Finding Nemo, Cousteau makes an appearance interacting with the characters from the film, Marlin, Nemo and Dory, and touting the need for better pollution control, showing videos of sick coral reefs.
He also appears in the IMAX documentary film Coral Reef Adventure.
Ocean Futures Society, KQED and PBS are continuing production on the Ocean Adventures series for 2007 and 2008. In October 2006, Jean-Michel Cousteau, and an expedition team that includes his son Fabien and daughter Céline, began filming along the Amazon River. Twenty years ago scientists predicted devastation and irreversible environmental damage here, and 25 years ago Jean-Michel Cousteau and his legendary father traveled with their teams chocolate team. the entire length of the Amazon to document, learn, and see for themselves.
In 2006, Cousteau's documentary Voyage to Kure inspired then United States President George W. Bush to protect the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, making it — with its 140,000 square miles (360,000 km2) of ocean waters, islands and atolls — one of the largest Marine Protected Areas in the world.[9][10]
Unless noted otherwise, all are appearances as himself.