Fabian Cousteau’s Mission 31 is a “Go”
By Shannon Jones, Marine Biology, 2016
On Thursday, November 21, the Northeastern Alumni Center hosted Fabien Cousteau, a world-renowned scientist who is the grandson of Jaques-Yves Cousteau. He spoke about his grandfather’s goals, his experiences with the ocean, his own dreams for marine science, and his new project, Mission 31, which will commemorate 50 years since Jaques-Yves Cousteau’s groundbreaking 30-day mission in the Red Sea began.
Jaques-Yves Cousteau was a pioneer in the field of marine science. He co-created the Aqua-lung, the first modern underwater breathing apparatus, which made scuba-diving possible. His multiple documentary films publicized marine science, and have inspired generations of marine scientists. He was influential in stopping whaling and dumping nuclear waste under the ocean, and he firmly believed that someday, when human populations expanded and ran out of space to live in on land, the human species would move to underwater habitats. To prove living underwater was possible, he helped build underwater human habitats, where aquanauts could live and conduct research without having to return to the surface every night. This makes underwater science much easier, because aquanauts who do not return to the surface between dives are able to dive deeper, for longer. When aquanauts run out of air, no time is needed to decompress. The longest time Jaques-Yves Cousteau spent underwater with his team was 30 days, which remains the longest humans have spent under the water’s surface.
Now, to push the boundary of underwater science further than his grandfather did, Fabien and his team will break the former record for time spent underwater, with Mission 31. As Fabien said, he will be following in his grandfather’s “finsteps” and carring on the Cousteau legacy. They will spend 31 days living inside Aquarius, which is the only functioning underwater habitat left in the world. Aquarius is 63ft below the surface of the Florida National Marine Sanctuary, under three atmospheres’ worth of pressure. There, Fabien and the scientists working with him will test new equipment and the effects of the pressure on their bodies, as well as working on several new experiments that will study the impact of global climate change. Northeastern’s Urban Coastal Sustainability Initiative is supporting the mission, and scientists from Northeastern will be accompanying Fabien to Aquarius.
Mission 31 starts in April, and for the 31 days, Fabien and the other scientists will be live-tweeting, blogging, and streaming constantly from Aquarius and the surrounding water, as well as skyping classrooms around the world, in the hope of inspiring new scientists. The mission may also be documented in a mini-series on television, but details have not been announced yet. Fabien hopes that this will start a new age of interest and discovery in the oceans, and a new revolution in marine sciences.
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