The red touque on the 370 ft Brittanic dive was a bit much, especially since all the other divers were wearing hoods. It struck me as a want-to-make-sure-everyone-knows-it's-me gesture.
I was not overly impressed with their penetration techniques either.
From what I have heard and seen Cousteau was not exactly progressive in some areas. For example none of his divers use BC's but horse collar and back inflate BC's were around and in common use at the time. So personally, there is not much excuse for the hand diving and bottom bouncing done in many of the DVD's. But then again, the behavior was considered normal for the time. We had a similar discussion several months back about his archeological techniques and ethics. They do not meet today's much higher standards, but were acceptable at that time.
One of the strongest critisims I heard was regarding some of his cave diving exploits where JMC inisisted on using flares rather than electric lights and in the process contaminated some otherwise pristine cave systems with the chemical residue from the numerous flares used. They look cool, I guess that's what counted.
Jean-Michelle Cousteau spoke at one of our college scuba club meetings in the early 80's. He was very environmentally focused and his view of equipment was very advanced and very visionary. At that time he was using what looked a lot like a US Divers UDS system but with 4500 psi tanks. He impressed me a great deal - much more so than his father.
and discussing it with my buddy who lent me the DVDs.
