Water, Water, Everywhere

And All of It Polluted. That is Fabien Cousteau’s Ultimate Fear. But He Believes We Can Still Reverse What Mankind Has Done to the Oceans 
 

- Darren Ho

Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, but in nature, mimicry plays an important role in the very survival of a species. Predators do it to hoodwink their prey. Indigenous Australians dress up as kangaroos when hunting the marsupials. So when oceanographer and environmentalist Fabien Cousteau wanted to get close to sharks to learn more about them, he figured the best way to do it was to look like one.

Inspired by an old Tintin story, Red Rackham’s Treasure, he got Hollywood engineer Eddie Paul to design and build a wet submarine that looked like a 14-metre great white shark. The 540-kilogram craft was named Troy and allowed Cousteau to remain underwater with a six-hour air supply, even if its structure meant he had to lie on his belly, propped up on his elbows, to operate it.

Troy was simultaneously a disaster and a success. While the sharks did view it as another of their species, reacting to it as they would another shark, manoeuvring it to move like a great white was immensely difficult. In one instance, the sub sank to the seabed and rescuers had to dive down to free him. Cousteau, who had invested his own monies into Troy, had to sell his apartment in New York to recoup the losses that the project had incurred. But the CBS documentary, Mind of a Demon, succeeded in bringing the telegenic ocean explorer to the fore of the ocean conservation sphere that has been a legacy of the Cousteau family.