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My wife and I attended a weekend long scuba diving conference held from 11/9/01 through 11/11/01 in Duluth, Minnesota. The conference is an annual one held there called the Gales of November. This year's keynote speaker was none other than Jean Michel Cousteau.
Jean Michele opened his lecture with this wonderful anecdote about one of his father's colleagues - Phillippe Tailliez. Phillippe was one of the other two men who helped Jaques Cousteau invent scuba diving during the early 1940's. Jean-Michele makes a habit of going diving with Phillippe on the day of his birthday. Their most recent excursion was to mark the passing of Phillippe's 95th birthday!
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After the dive, Jean-Michele expressed his hope that they would be able to continue the tradition and do a dive on Phillippe's 100th birthday. The captain (as Jean-Michele defers to him) replied, "But Jean-Michele, I'm worried that you may not be around then!" The entire audience just roared with laughter!
During his lecture, he showed us a video that is a work in progress which he shot in South Africa off of Cape Town with a local expert in great white sharks. This is the current "hot spot" for spotting great white sharks as it is also a breeding ground for sea lions. The local expert has developed a process for diving in the open water with great whites when ideal conditions exist and security is present. The security basically involves wielding hardened sticks that look like rebar to bump and, if necessary, poke, the great whites in the nose if they get too close.
In addition to the local expert demonstrating his ability to pet the great whites, he also tries to catch a ride with one (much like the trainer did in the Hollywood movie "Deep Blue Sea"). The expert is not able to grab the back of one passing 13 ft. female great white's top fin. He encourages Cousteau to try. Throughout the video Cousteau appears very cautious and one would think he would opt out. When the shark swims buy, he reluctantly reaches out and is able to successfully grab onto the great white's fin and take a ride! This was way cool -- I was totally blown away.
After the lecture, my wife and I mustered up enough courage to meet Jean Michel as he signed books for guests. I asked him if we could have our picture taken with him and he readily obliged us. If any of you get a chance to hear one of Jean Michel's lectures, I highly recommend that you do so. I consider myself lucky to have met him in Minnesota. The last time he was up here was in 1980/1981 when he did an expedition of the Great Lakes with his father - Jaques Cousteau.