Jean-Michel Cousteau

October 21, 2009

For more than four decades, explorer, environmentalist, educator and film producer Jean-Michel Cousteau has used his vast experience to communicate to people of all nations and generations his love and concern for our water planet.

Since first being “thrown overboard” by his father at the age of seven with newly invented Scuba gear on his back, Cousteau has been exploring the ocean realm. The son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, he spent much of his life with his family exploring the world’s oceans. After his mother’s death in 1990, and his father’s death in 1997, Cousteau founded Ocean Futures Society, a non-profit marine conservation and education organization in 1999, to carry on this pioneering work. He serves as president of that society.

Cousteau is an impassioned spokesman and diplomat for the environment, reaching out to the public through a variety of media. He has produced more than 70 films, and been awarded the Emmy, the Peabody Award, the 7 d’Or - the French equivalent of the Emmy, and the Cable ACE Award.

In addition to his awards for film, his book “Jean-Michel Cousteau’s America’s Underwater Treasures,” has received two prestigious awards in the independent publishing world, the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book (Non-Fiction) and the 2008 IPPY Gold Medal Award for best book in the environment/ecology/nature category.

Acting on a childhood dream to build cities under the sea, Cousteau pursued a degree in architecture, graduating from the Paris School of Architecture in 1964. Recently he has been involved with the Jean-Michel Cousteau Fiji Islands Resort, designed to demonstrate an environmentally responsible and culturally appropriate ocean-oriented resort.