Cousteau

The Florida Keys. In a leisurely afternoon you can drive from one Interzone, one Mermaid Hotel, one Funkytown to another ... South Beach to Key West.

Dateline: 1985. Fled dying relationship. Sailed away to Key Largo.

Radio: Here's lookin' at you, kid.

Keys living. Perfect for heartsickness.

Late February 1993. Morning swim workout at Flamingo Park pool. Radio: Jean-Michel Cousteau will be at Cheeca Lodge in Islamorada March 27 to give a presentation on the state of the water planet.

Enter in mental memory. Back into water. Finish laps. Doze in sun.

Jean-Michel Cousteau. Son of Jacques Cousteau of Calypso, the boat about which John Denver sang.

Stop into Books & Books. Purchase Cousteau's Papua New Guinea Journey. Take home to read.

Finish book (skip to end). Digital clock 12:23 a.m. Doze. A spirit speaks in waves over mindscape.

We're part of an interplay of natural forces.

You seek happiness.

Remember swimming in the ocean last summer? Do it again in the morning, conditions permitting ... feel the surf resonate with your spirit, as with countless creatures before you ... From Mare Liberum you came. The free sea.

Happiness. It's in your front yard.

Morning. Check out surf. Water rough. Man-o-war. Conditions permitting, not. Gaia doing pool maintenance. There'll be other mornings.

Call Cheeca Lodge. What's this about Jean-Michel Cousteau? Public-relations director, Julie Perrin, describes it. First, an event for children. Then a press conference. Then a reception, gala dinner, and film.

Make reservations. Write packing list. Don't forget anything. Swimsuit. Spare swimsuit. Goggles. Spare goggles. Mask. Snorkel. Fins. SPF-whatever. Oh yeah ... Notepad. Pen.

Details.

* * * * * * * *

Dateline: 1993. The keys. Been there before.

Keys weekend. Perfect for citysickness.

Press conference. Jean-Michel sits at table with several of us media types. Azure Atlantic. Patent South Florida spring weather. One of those "hard to believe I'm part of this" scenes. I listen, mostly (asking only the second-to-last question).

Interviewer(s): What are your first memories on Calypso?

Jean-Michel: I started out as a kid, doing the dirty jobs, the things no one else would do ... things kids are good at. Painting. Scrubbing the decks. Washing dishes. I was twelve years old. Gradually I worked my way up, till I was behind the wheel.

Did you have romantic ideas about being on the boat with your dad?

Oh, not really. I was there from the start. It wasn't a dream ... I grew up with it.

The kids ... you asked them more questions than they asked you today.

We can learn from children. Their sense of the world is more simple than ours. More basic. We need to hear what they say. It helps us get our priorities right. For years we were drifting away from the environment. Now we're coming back. Children know this.

Your dad was a military man, wasn't he? Has that helped you?

My father was a military man, and will always be a military man. Except that now, he doesn't wear a uniform. A ship's crew is like a family. But there must be discipline ... order ... a boss. It's not always like paradise. There are beautiful days. But people get sick. They have to wash their own clothes. They get drenched all the time. They're far from loved ones. Sometimes it's like hell. So the discipline holds things together.

Where are you going next?

This year (1993), to the South Pacific and Fiji. The cost is four thousand dollars for fourteen days, through "Project Ocean Search."

What is that?

We go to remote places. There are classes in biology, photography ... field days in the islands or jungles. People of all ages can go, from 16 through ... well, quite old. Some of the oldest people are the least disciplined. There was a 72-year-old woman we had to keep going after because she wanted to dive deep, deep, deep. Fifteen hundred feet, if we let her. So one day I was assigned to watch over her. Down she went. I grabbed her. When we surfaced, I saw that she was wearing her hearing aid. I asked her something, and she said, "What?" We were out in the wild, and her hearing aid was gone. But she got by. She read lips, or something.

How do you feel about captive marine mammals?

Marine mammals ... all creatures ... do not behave normally in jail. To study anatomy, yes, they are the same in captivity as in the wild. But you do not see normal behavior.

Examples?

In the wild, it's difficult. They must constantly search for food. The strong survive, and the species gets stronger. But in a zoo, they get fed in five minutes. The weak, the sick, and the strong all get fed. Then they have nothing to do. They get bored. They get fat. The species changes. A captive dolphin is not the same as a dolphin in the wild.

What else?

Well, I have very mixed feelings about putting animals in captivity. How much sex can you have with people watching you?

People are in it for the money, aren't they?

In regards to keeping animals in captivity, usually they are, yes. That's not acceptable to me. People will teach a dolphin to jump fifteen feet, so that other people who come to the zoo and pay their money can watch the dolphin jump fifteen feet. Then they'll say, "Wow, I got my five dollars' worth!" The dolphins are taught tricks. They jump so high, and then they get food as a reward. Then people hide their guilt by saying they're doing science. That's not science. There is legitimate research going on in some places, but a lot of it is really just to make money. Why can't they be straight about it, and say they're in it for the money?

What about other marine mammals?

Overall we're doing well. We haven't won the battle, so to speak. But things are improving in some ways. They took the California Grey Whale off the Endangered Species List just awhile ago. We still must be careful. Aware. Other species are not doing so well. Manatees ... North Pacific Humpback Whales are not doing as well.

Is it too late for the manatees?

I believe you've won until you've lost. The population has stabilized. But it's not increasing. In some places they're keeping boats out, or imposing speed limits. But manatees are slow. They're hard for a boater to see. They swim in water so shallow that they often cannot get out of the way of a propeller. And anyway, is it better to have five propeller cuts instead of seven cuts, or whatever?

What are your feelings about militant environmentalist groups?

I am against lawbreaking. If you don't like the law, you change the law. I am against violence.

After having read your book about Papua New Guinea, I was impressed with the intensity of your writing. Especially about happiness. How should we humans see our role in the world?

I think there are two kinds of people. There are us, in the industrial world, and then there are those who are more in tune with the planet, like the people of Papua New Guinea. If we closed the borders of every nation, so that no one could leave or come into any country, we in the industrialized world would be in real trouble. We import and export. We learn from other cultures. We need the resources that come from those places. But in Papua New Guinea, they have all they need. They wouldn't suffer much. The quality of their life would change very little. They have a good quality of life. Happiness ... quality of life ... can't be measured in dollars. We work our butts off for fifty weeks so we can have ... what? ... two weeks of happiness? We have washing machines and camcorders. Primitive people see these things and want them. But what price can you put on the smell of a flower? Or fish in the sea? Some things you can buy, and some you cannot. So who is right? Them or us? Can we go back and be like them? Absolutely not. Can we have both worlds? Theirs and ours? For a good recipe, you need the right ingredients. I love this country. I've been here twenty-five years. If I take a good recipe and prepare it, but put in too much salt, I'll screw it up. In the industrialized world, we have a good recipe. But we've added too much salt. We have much to learn from other peoples, the other cultures, of the world.

* * * * * * * *

Back home. Consult with UTM (Universal Thought Machine).

Fran: Just got back from a press conference with Jean-Michel Cousteau.

UTM: Did he meet your expectations?

I don't form expectations about people who know more than I.

Did he give you any advice?

He gave advice for all humanity.

Such as?

Such as, Listen to children! He listens to what they say. He wants to learn from them.

Cool.

So many people want fame and power. Jean-Michel has those things, but they haven't spoiled him.

True greatness does not come by pursuing fame or money or power, but by doing what you love, and by making the world a better place.

He wants us to slow down and see the happiness around us. To take the time to know our children while they're growing up, until they're ready to chase their own dreams. He says, do that, and everything else will follow.

If you love something or someone, you take care of it. Or her. Or him. And you take the time to care. However much time.

Yes.

Children are born loving the Earth.

But they seem to lose that love when they grow up ... I wonder about something. Are dolphins smarter than humans?

Your mind jumps around like a little kid's. (Pause) Let's say dolphins are wiser than humans. They don't wreck their own habitat.

Then even worms are wiser than humans.

Animals can't hate. And they aren't obsessed with pride.

Is that what we humans need to learn to live with the earth? Or unlearn, I mean. To forget how to hate, how to be selfishly proud?

Academic, my dear boy.

What?

You heard Jean-Michel. At the very beginning of his talk, he said that living in harmony with the planet is not an option. It's a mandate. How you do it is not the issue. What matters is that you must do it.

I am left with this feeling ... maybe growing up is not all that good.

In some ways it's good. In some ways it's bad.

Some great people, like Einstein, said they never lost their childlike sense of wonder, and that was how they made their discoveries.

Like when Jean-Michel takes people of all ages on expeditions in "Project Ocean Search."

Sometimes I think you know everything.

You and I both know that's impossible. But I do know that you want to swim with Tari.

What?

The explorer from Tau Ceti B.

You're out of line, you mutant microchip.

The constellation Cetus ...

It means cetacean. Whale/dolphin. I know.

Tari is surfing with whales right now.

Oh yah right. Where, Universal Transcendental Mind?

Off the coast of Baja California. (Pause) You thought she came to Earth just to look at humans, didn't you? Ha ha ha ha!

Well ...

It's that pride obsession. Where do you industrialized-world types get that malarkey? Let me call Tari and bring her here. She'll get you over it fast.

No way. (Reaches for plug)

Hurry hurry hurry.

'Bye.

Here's lookin' at you, kid.

(Click!)

Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000 by Francisco Carrera.