The grandson of legendary French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau spent his first day back on dry land today after spending a record 31 days at an underwater laboratory.
Fabien Cousteau and a team of “aquanauts” from two US universities spent the last month onboard the Aquarius lab, 63 feet below the surface of the ocean off the Florida Keys.
Our US correspondent Steve Mort reports.
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SCRIPT: Back on the surface after a month living underwater - Fabien Cousteau says he’s already missing life beneath the waves.
UPSOUND: “Hey Doug! Welcome back. I wish I could say I was happy to be here.”
Arriving back on dry land, Cousteau and his team of scientists have been gathering data on a nearby coral reef.
Cousteau says the information they've collected on marine life and ocean pollution, including contamination leftover from the BP oil spill, is enough to fill ten scientific papers.
INSERT: “The magic or the luxury of saturation diving, of living on the final frontier - which is our oceans - is that it gives us the luxury of time. And that’s something that is very very rare. It’s an invaluable tool to do science for lengthy periods of time.”
The scientists onboard the Aquarius lab during the 31-day mission claim they’ve gathered the equivalent of two years of data in just one month.
Mark Patterson is a Professor at Northeastern University
“So we got a really good look at what a day in the life of a sponge is like. And since all the water in a coral reef is estimated to go through the body of a sponge every 24 to 48 hours, that’s a really important data set.”
By spending 31 days underwater, Fabien Cousteau beats his grandfather Jacques Cousteau’s record of 30 days beneath the Red Sea in the 1960s on the underwater colony, Conshelf Two.
INSERT: “Mission 31 is really based on Conshelf Two as a symbolic platform for many reasons; for inspiration of the general public, for the fact that habitats are few and far between. As a matter of fact, this is the only undersea marine laboratory left in the world and, as such, we need to bring attention to it and leverage that attention to spawn off new habitats in different parts of the world. Because as a final frontier, this is one of those places that gives us a frontline view of what’s going on in the ocean when we’re not around.”
Fabien Cousteau and his team are now being monitored by doctors after their time living under pressure without sunlight. But such checks are unlikely to keep this explorer away from his family business for long.
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