Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau: Oceanographer

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"When we dive a few years apart in the same places, we notice at once a tremendous change and not a good one. All the changes that we notice are all in the same direction – destruction.

"I am diving since 33 years and I'm still diving actively. I have made comparisons between some interesting places in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea, in the Indian Ocean, in the Atlantic, in the Pacific, and mainly in California, and I must say that, in all these places, the change is radical. The vitality of nature has decreased at least 50%, or more, since 33 years. In the Mediterranean, there are practically no fish on the coast anymore; there were plenty 30 years ago. The groupers have totally disappeared.

"In the Red Sea, the northern and the southern coral reefs are destructed. There is still an oasis of live coral reefs in the center. In the Indian Ocean, even in remote places like the Canal of Mozambique between South Africa and Madagascar, atolls and coral islands are dying from oil pollution. In California, to speak about America, in 1951, under each stone, there were enormous lobsters. You can't find any, any more; it's finished. So this is the situation, roughly speaking. I can give you many other examples to such an extent that what I am doing now with the Calypso and my 50 associates – we are actively putting into the [record] as much as we can from this dying ocean before it is too late.

RACE TO SURVIVE

"Pollution is not the only destructive effect. It's a major one, but probably on an equal par with fishing. There is a lot of nonsense told about fishing, even in the official circles. 'We are going to increase the fishing capacity, etc.', which means we are going to destroy ten times more. That's all that we are going to do, and, already now, even the pelagic fishes that used to come to the California coast, like the yellow-fin tuna, destroyed at another point of their migration by the Japanese, do not come any more; so the sardines that were abundant on the coast of Mexico do not exist any more. Factories have closed.

"So it's a race now to hunt the last animals in existence with the most elaborate electronic devices. It's madness. We have to stop that if we want to protect what is left now. It doesn't mean that we don't have to take advantage of the biological resources of the oceans, but not by hunting – by farming. This is the origin of civilization. It's when man has turned from hunting to farming, and I would like everybody to understand this: that we have to abandon sooner – anyway before the year 2000 – any kind of fishing in the ocean and turn to healthy, decent, intelligent civilized farming.

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