Fabien Cousteau has the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau in his blood, not that there was ever a doubt. If there was, then what the grandson of the renowned oceanographer plans on doing come this fall pretty much confirms it.
Fabien plans on spending 31 days living under the sea in Aquarius, an “inner-space” station sitting on the seafloor in 63 feet of water in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, nine miles south of Key Largo.
fabien cousteau
The project is called Mission 31 and kicks off in mid-September with saturation training, followed by the first full day of submersion on Oct. 1. This will coincide with the 50th anniversary of when Jacques Yves Cousteau broke ground on underwater habitation, leading a team of ocean explorers on the first attempt to live and work underwater. That experiment went for 30 days aboard Conshelf II in the Red Sea.
Fabien, accompanied by three aspiring marine biologists, will expand the mission by one full day and be 30-feet deeper in a lab roughly the size of a school bus.
“When my grandfather’s Conshelf II mission was complete, he produced an Academy Award-winning documentary film [‘World Without Sun’], but still received criticism rooted in disbelief of how he captured the mind-boggling underwater scenes,” Cousteau said. “Using the latest camera technology, we will be able to show the world every second of Mission 31 in unedited, real-time and I believe it’s going to shock people. We have explored less than 5 percent of our ocean realms; there’s so much more to be discovered.”