From mermaid princess to emerging explorer

Alexandra Cousteau’s underwater universe.

WORDS  JOSEPH L. GARCIA MAIN PHOTO BIL ZELMAN 

Following in the tradition of cool, blonde heiresses before her, Alexandra Cousteau travels the world, brings around scarves, and takes photos with her camera. She thinks about investments; she thinks about her clothes, her food, where her water comes from — and as much as this seems like a story of another beautiful life nurtured by a sizeable inheritance, more than money, what Ms. Cousteau has inherited from her family is a legacy for service, and a love for the planet which extends to a love for its people.

Ms. Cousteau is the daughter of Philippe Cousteau, who is, in turn, the son of Jacques Cousteau. Jacques Cousteau began his career as a French naval officer, and later in life, became an avid advocate for protecting the seas. His diving expeditions led him to co-develop the aqua-lung, a predecessor of SCUBA gear. The senior Mr. Cousteau then became known for a series of documentaries, winning a Palme d’Or at Cannes for The Silent World. He continued with a career on American television, hosting a documentary series called The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Anyone who grew up in the 1970s should remember the image of Jacques Cousteau in his red beanie (a look that Wes Anderson parodied and paid tribute to in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). Cousteau’s son Philippe, Ms. Cousteau’s father, followed in Jacques’ footsteps. Aside from co-producing a few of his father’s films, Philippe gleefully explored the oceans himself until his untimely death in 1979.

Deep-seated fascination with the ocean remains in Cousteau blood, as Ms. Cousteau showed during her visit to the Philippines this August. The main reason was to promote awareness on sustainable fisheries management and illegal fishing practices, but her itinerary also included diving trips in Cebu and El Nido, Palawan, a place that her grandfather visited in the 1990s on his boat, Calypso. She’s in the family business, being named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2008. She talked about being raised in such an environment, going on expeditions with her father at only a few months old, and later discovering the wonders that reside beneath the waves through her grandfather. “He taught me to dive when I was seven. I would visit him in Monaco and we’d look at the aquarium, play games where I would be the mermaid princess and he would be the steward-king of this underwater universe,” she said with a charming lilt, a vestige of her roots in California, where she was born in 1976. “We had these moments together,” she said of her grandfather with fond laughter. “He was a magical person.”

“It wasn’t like a luxury lifestyle,” she added, lest people misconstrue what these expeditions were like. “We weren’t staying in luxury hotels, we were on boats. We were immersing ourselves in local environments. You know, it could be really hard,” she continued, “It was a fantastic adventure — and going places that no one had ever been, making films, and all of that was really fun.”

It’s interesting to see how her grandfather fell in love with the sea by exploring it, and in falling in love with it, he resolved to protect it. This love flowed across generations. “He said, ‘people protect what they love, and they love what they know,’ and he started to know the oceans, and he fell in love with them.”

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

People saddled with a famous last name are often asked if there was any pressure to do the same as the previous generation, or even do it one better. Ms. Cousteau accepted the price — if one can call it that — of carrying the Cousteau name, with pleasure. “I never felt pressured to do this. It was just as much a way of life; and a career choice.”

The early death of her father in the same line of work — in a flying-boat crash near Lisbon in 1979 — didn’t deter her. “My father passed away when I was about four, so I don’t remember a lot from his period,” she said. Any of her fears are allayed by her sense of duty — not just to her family’s legacy, but to the planet, and herself.

“I’m a very cautious person. I’ve had some near-misses, but… I don’t know. People say lightning doesn’t strike in the same place. My grandfather died at 87. My uncle’s still alive, and he’s 76. I don’t take unnecessary risks, and even though I live fully, in what I do, it’s also that it’s not only the right life for me and what makes me happy —  it’s the right thing to do.”

“I’m not going to shrink away from it, because I feel like that’s where I can have the most impact, that’s where I feel purpose. That’s where my life makes sense,” she said. “It’s just who I am.”

IT STARTS IN OUR BACKYARDS

Thank goodness for wealth; it gives us the ability to choose. Ms. Cousteau’s wealth, however, is derived from an intimate knowledge of the environment, and her choices are molded by what she knows, instead of what she can buy. “You can’t unlearn these things, and it’s hard, then, not to incorporate what you’ve learned and what you’ve seen, into how you live,” she said.

For example, when asked what her favorite marine animal was, she responded: “I love sharks.” In a world that can sometimes be cruel, where the wanton pursuit of pleasure has become a sort of norm, a love of sharks can translate to shark leather, or sharksfin soup. The very idea horrifies Ms. Cousteau. “Don’t get me started. I mean, it is absolutely preposterous that we allow shark finning to occur for a soup that makes people feel rich. It’s 2% of 2% of the animal. We’re destroying these beautiful creatures so people can feel rich. It’s just the height of narcissism, and greed, and ignorance.”

Ms. Cousteau believes that everything we do impacts the planet in some way, which is why, more often than not, she’s careful with how she lives. “I think it’s important to tell people that the oceans start in our backyards. They start at our dinner table, they start in our supermarkets… that’s where the oceans begin. The choices we make when we eat seafood, the choices we make in all our different ways impact our oceans.”

“If you pour motor oil down a drain in Montana, it will end up in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s what I mean when the oceans start in our backyards.”

During the press conference in Makati’s M Cafe, Ms. Cousteau ate a salad while the other guests munched on crab. “We don’t eat meat, or fish. The cumulative effect of our choices is deteriorating our environment, and we are dependent on our environment for clean air and water, and food, and all of those things. It just felt like a moral choice,” she said.

She talked about her disdain for the meat industry, saying: “Fish that is human quality is being fed to pigs instead of being fed to hungry children. The whole system is rotten, and I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to contribute to it. I don’t want to give them my money.”

Despite being vegetarian, she doesn’t have a problem with eating meat. “I’m not like a crazy vegan, but I think it’s important that if and when I do eat meat, it has to be local, organic, family-farmed: you know, a happy animal that had one bad day.”

It’s funny how she uses the phrase “crazy vegan” — she’s well aware of the stereotype of the environmentalist-activist, ranting and raving about the excesses of people. Her relatively loose attitude about other people’s choices, when compared to her standards, is refreshing. In an interview in 2009 with Experience Life magazine, she quipped: “The view of environmentalists has changed. We used to be considered tree-hugging, hippie freaks, but, clearly, I’m not that and I’m definitely an environmentalist.” Upon being reminded of her choice of words, she laughed, “Did I use those terms?”

Ms. Cousteau is the first to say that she is far from being a saint. “Sometimes, I drink out of a plastic bottle, because that’s all there is,” she said. “This isn’t about being perfect and sacrificing, but I feel like the choices I make are an investment in the world I want my children to grow up in.” It’s important to make the distinction, which she repeats: “The more I learn, I realize that these aren’t sacrifices that we make —  it’s an investment in our future.”

HOW TO LIVE

Ms. Cousteau is married, with two children: a girl, aged five; and a boy, aged one. Like Preston Whitmore said in the animated movie, Atlantis: The Lost Empire (incidentally, also a movie about exploration, knowledge, and loving what has been found): “Our lives are remembered by the gifts we leave our children.” Ms. Cousteau is the steward of a family legacy that she hopes will continue through her children. “I’ll be able to take my daughter snorkeling, for the first time, in Palawan, which will be extremely special for her and for me, as well,” she mused. “There are so few places like that in the world. To be able to share a place like that with my child is extraordinarily meaningful because this is part of her history.”

When Jacques Cousteau left the world in the 1990s, research on climate change was just beginning to explode thanks to technology. Scientists reported on how climate change was radically changing the earth’s oceans in ways that industry and pollution could not. Despite Jacques Cousteau’s best efforts to introduce us to marine marvels, this is the world that his generation bequeathed to his granddaughter. Ms. Cousteau hopes that the story will play out differently for her daughter. “I would like our oceans to be in better shape when she’s my age than they are today,” she said. “I want her to be able to see places restored, rather than, as I have in my life, seen places disappear.”