Word: diver
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...lens spectacles, Cousteau is a man with an antic turn of mind, loves to improvise wacky film scenarios (a nearsighted bull gets contact lenses, routs the matador and escapes, only to starve because he cannot see the grass). But Cousteau is also a leader of men. When an inexperienced diver drowned trying to find the anchor of Calypso, Cousteau pulled on the dead man's Aqua-Lung and told his shaken crew: "I'm going down for the anchor. Those of you who want to help, follow me." The men followed. Cousteau found the anchor...
Records & Rapture. Cousteau maintains that he had no idea what he had started when he first stood on his finger and laughed aloud in his Aqua-Lung. Whole new fields are opening up for free divers, who, like Cousteau, soon tire of skewering fish as too easy (cracks one Frenchman: "It's like chasing elephants in a sports car"). The move is toward wreck-hounding, tracing underground springs through black and frigid waters, studying rock and reef, and taking underwater color movies. Equipped with Aqua-Lungs, divers are gradually taking over much of the work of the traditional helmeted...
With everyone getting into the swim, Cousteau and his fellow experts fret about safety. They deplore any attempt to set records, either with or without an Aqua-Lung.* Snaps Cousteau: "It does not depend on your ability as a diver. You are just finding out what your physique can stand that day." Last year the Portuguese spearfishing champion, a top-flight French diver and two strong Americans drowned because apparently they blacked out while swimming with held breath, and gulped water. In place of spearfishing competition, Cousteau would like to see surface races between swimmers wearing masks and foot fins...
Bends & Bubbles. For the untrained or careless diver, Aqua-Lunging presents a host of dangers: swimming too long in cold water can subtly bleed off his body heat until he finds himself suddenly exhausted ; holding his breath during the last 30 ft. of ascent can rupture his lungs as they expand under the rapidly decreasing pressure; successive deep descents can cripple him with the old diver's disease of the bends unless he decompresses the nitrogen bubbles in his blood by lingering at graduated stages...
Most treacherous of all is nitrogen narcosis-"rapture of the depths." Below 140 ft. the buildup of nitrogen in a diver's body somehow drugs his senses as alcohol does. Magnificently drunk, the diver becomes an underwater god. He may offer his mouthpiece to a passing fish. Maurice Fargues, a great diver on the Cousteau team, was brought up dead from 394 ft., his mouthpiece hanging loose around his neck. "I personally am quite receptive to nitrogen narcosis," says Cousteau. "I love it and fear it like doom...