Breaking new grounds in ocean exploration and honoring the 50th anniversary of the monumental legacy left by Fabien’s grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau who is credited with creating the first ocean floor habitats for humans and leading a team of ocean explorers on the first attempt to live and work underwater, the grandson of pioneering ocean explorer is trying to break his grandfather’s record of time spent underwater.
Fabien Cousteau is an oceanographic explorer, conservationist and documentary filmmaker. As the first grandson of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Fabien spent his early years aboard his famous grandfather’s ships, Calypso and Alcyone and learned how to scuba dive on his fourth birthday. Today, Fabien continues to fulfill his family’s legacy to protect and preserve the planet’s extensive and endangered marine inhabitants and habitats. He is using his knowledge to help refine a public policy platform grounded in the belief that environmental discipline can be the basis for cutting-edge solutions that strike a balance between regional as well as global environmental problems and the realities of market economies.
In 2013, Fabien announced his global Mission 31 expedition that breaks new ground in ocean exploration and also coincides with the 50th anniversary of a monumental legacy left by his grandfather. In 2014, Mission 31 will commence to honor Cousteau’s original experiment by going deeper, longer and further while broadcasting each moment on multiple channels exposing the world to the adventure, risk and mystique of what lies beneath.
Fabien is working on a book documenting the adventures of Mission 31.
According to WFOR-TV, Fabien Cousteau is planning to spend 31 days in the undersea laboratory known as Aquarius, in an attempt to outdo his grandfather, who spent 30 days living in an underwater village he created.
Fabien and his team of aquanauts will pay tribute to his grandfather’s Conshelf Two mission by expanding the Cousteau legacy by one full day for a total of 31 days.
The younger Cousteau descended the waves off Key Largo, Fla., on June 1 to study the coral reef for the Mission 31 expedition.
“It’s strange, but I don’t really miss much up there,” said Fabien Cousteau. “It’s very much like an International Space Station mission. This is the Inner Space Station”.
The lab, the station reports, is the size of a school bus, about 50 feet below the ocean’s surface about 3 miles off Key Largo. Aquarius includes a kitchen, air-conditioning and six sleeping compartments.
Food and other items the team needs is delivered by boat, sealed in a large cooking pot and hand-delivered daily by scuba divers.
Using live, real-time 24/7 updates on multiple new technology channels, Fabien’s team will expose the world to the adventure, risk and mystique of what lies beneath, while highlighting the human-ocean connection within the lens of exploration and discovery.
Cousteau also has been holding online chats with classrooms around the world. And he’s even had visitors like actor Ian Somerhalder, marine biologist Sylvia Earle and his father, Jean-Michel Cousteau.
Cousteau plans to come out on July 2, when it will take 18 hours to safely reach the surface. That’s the amount of time needed to let the body re-adjust, avoiding embolisms, paralysis and even death.


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