The Plowboy Interview
Alice Ballard interviews Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau, director of Musee Oceanographic, Monaco.
Of the many oceanographic conferences held in 1969, one
– OCEANOGRAPHY 2000 – was unique: It was held
for students. Jointly conducted by the U.S. Naval Institute
– which is the Navy's professional society –
and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland from
December 10th through 13th, the gathering brought 575
college students face to face with world famous
oceanographers such as Jacques Cousteau and Roger Revelle.
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Cousteau's address was particularly effective against the
current "the-sea-is-inexhaustable-let's harvest
(rape)-the-bounty" thinking we hear so much of these days.
That's the old "buffalo hunter" mentality, gang, and it
ain't gonna work under water any better than it's worked on
land.
"The 20th of July, 1969, I was on board Calypso in the
Aleutian Islands. We were having one of our minisubs
exploring the bottom of a canyon of this island called Viva
Inlet, and the sub was about in 800 or 900 feet of depth.
Raymond Cole was in it. We had the sonar telephone on the
fantail and we were in communication with him and, at the
very same time, we had a loudspeaker on the fantail giving
us a direct account from the first landing on the moon. All
the crew was there. We were all very excited, of course, by
this historical landing and we could hear the
communications of Armstrong to Houston, Texas, and, at the
same time, this was intermingled with reports from Raymond
Cole at the bottom of the sea. We were relaying this
information to Cole, who was just as excited as we were. We
explained to him, 'Armstrong opens the hatch, he's climbing
down the ladder . . . There it is, he's on the moon." Then
there was a silence. Raymond Cole expressed his admiration.
Then another silence. Then he said, 'Well, I am not going
to open my hatch!'
"The description from the moon described a hostile, dusty,
grayish, impressive but empty desert barren universe. And
this was intermingled with the descriptions of Raymond Cole
telling us about the hordes of king crabs he was following
in their migration – some of them at great depth,
burrowing into the mud, which was a discovery for those who
are interested in king crabs – the bottom of the sea
being absolutely covered with a thick layer of swimming
shrimps, beautiful golgonyans in these cold waters down to
450 feet – and the contrast between this tremendously
populated world which is the sea and the generally barren
universe that not only Armstrong, but also the Surveyor,
described on Mars, suddenly enlightened my own conception
of the ocean.
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