Biography
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, 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. Cousteau and his father had disagreed about the management and policies of the Society.
After Cousteau opened a resort on a Fiji Island utilizing the family name, Jacques-Yves Cousteau filed a lawsuit against him in 1995. In June 1996, a court signed an injunction requiring him to add, with equal prominence in placement, his first name to the hotel. 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. 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.
Read more about this topic: Jean-Michel Cousteau
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