Jacques Cousteau has always been one of my heroes. I have been a diver most of my life because of my father, my Uncle Bob, and Captain Cousteau. Here is one of his classic texts, a little dated now (originally published in 1963), but still a fine introduction to life in the sea and to human efforts to enter, to observe, and to understand that undersea life.
More importantly, perhaps, this book guides us through the earliest period of scuba-diving and the slow process of applying this new technology of diving to exploring the underwater world, revolutionizing the whole fields of marine biology and oceanography. I've always been a particular aficionado of this early period when scuba was new--and Jacques, remember, was a crucial co-inventor of scuba--and I have always loved reading about that learning curve, that series of trials and errors. Mostly, I just love going underwater with my hero. (Cousteau's famous ship, the Calypso, is the star of much of this book also. Cousteau and her crew are predominantly French, so they needed a container on shipboard that could hold enough wine: a stainless steel "barrel" able to hold three tons of prime vintage!)
I would use excerpts from this book and the next, but the style doesn't work as well as the subject matter does. For a truly inspiring author from this early period of scuba, I turn to Honor Frost, as we shall see.
Cousteau, Jacques-Yves, with Frederic Dumas and James Dugan. The Silent World. New York: Ballantine, 1977.
My favorite of Cousteau's books, originally published in 1950. I always wanted Cousteau to be my father when I first read as a young man--and even as I reread--his description of introducing his two sons to the undersea world. In this volume, we get the true beginning of the scuba-story, complete with the free diving foundation, staving off starvation during World War II through spearfishing (with curtain rods, actually). This book provides the beginning and middle of the "menfish" dream that inspired Cousteau in his efforts to penetrate and plumb the depths; the end of that dream still lies in the future, I would hope and claim. Every diver everywhere owes something to Jacques; when warming up after my own dives, I wear the signature red stocking cap in honor of the Calypso's captain and crew.
Note: The undersea world is actually quite noisy; everybody who puts his or her head underwater for any length of time knows this, and so Cousteau has received a certain amount of criticism and even ridicule for his apparently inappropriate title. If you actually read the book, you find the episode in which his two boys are so excited as their father puts masks on their faces and regulators in their mouths and brings them underwater amongst the fishes, so excited that they can't stop talking, not even to breathe properly, talking so much that the regulators keep falling out of their mouths. Cousteau attempts to focus his children--and safeguard them--by pointing out that the sea is a "silent world" and they need to stop talking for a bit -- and perhaps participate in that "silence" or at least listen, but the two boys are simply too excited by the wonders before them to listen to their father. Who can blame them?
Hence, his quite appropriate and memorable title.
