Alright, so if you’re not aware this week marks the 30th edition of ‘Shark Week’. Basically, if you like me and absolute froth out over sharks this is a good week for you, not because it helps sharks in need or anything but rather that it attempts to paint these misunderstood toothy beauts in a more flattering light. Yeah, sure discovery channel is gonna probably cough up some garbage about Megladon or have some celebrity arm wrestle a shark (**hyperbole**) but so what. Just enjoy the show, or if you’re like me do a little reading on a species you not so clued up on, or better yet get yourself in the water with one. Free your mind and your ass will follow.
Let’s face it, we’re never getting away from sharks and if this year’s Corona Open Jbay is anything to go by, sharks are very much a part of the lineup, but you already knew that.
If your grandpa is the Grand Daddy of SCUBA diving (i.e Jacques-Yves Cousteau, just in case you had his name at the tip of your tongue) and you spent your childhood on the fabled research vessel Calypso, it wouldn’t be a silly notion that you developed a deep curiosity and love for what moved about below your board. Similarly, it wouldn’t strike one as odd that you piloted a submersible straight outta your wicked and wild imagination. One designed to look like a big ass shark to get you up close and personal with some big ass sharks for a CBS television special – Mind of the Demon. Still guessing who you are? Well, you’re the filmmaker and ocean explorer, Fabien Cousteau. He had big shoes to fill, I rate he’s done just that.
“Diving in it at night was one of the riskiest things I ever did, but you have to push the envelope if you want to know more. Every time I got into that shark-sub, something could have gone wrong. But I wasn’t worried about the sharks – only human error with the machine” – Fabien Cousteau.
Mind of the Demon from Peter Jay Brown on Vimeo.
In 1963, Jacques Cousteau lived for 30 days in an underwater laboratory on the floor of the Red Sea. In doing so he set a world record in the process. In 2014, his grandson Fabien Cousteau decided he was in the record-breaking game and pipped the vintage model by one day. In three weeks, three years of field data was collected, WINNING. Cousteau the younger lived for 31 days aboard the Aquarius, an underwater habitat. Atlantis does exist I guess.