Fabien Cousteau - Shark Special

[lock_washer]

Did anyone see last weeks special on CBS: Shark - Mind of the Demon. It featured Fabien Cousteau inside a mechanical great white shark diving with live great whites. It was more a reality show than documentary. What was a joke was the crew he had with him...makes you wonder about their creditials as a boat captain, support divers, or shark researcher. What was really sad was he was trying to live off the Cousteau name...but only showed pictures of Jacques. No mention at all of this father: Phillippe Cousteau. Phillipe Cousteau was a big part of all the Cousteau expeditions, but they totally ignored him in the special.

It shows you why the whole Cousteau family and Cousteau Society is in shambles.

The Calypso is rotting away in France and the whole family still quarrels. Jean Michel Cousteau has his enviroment group. He doesn't talk to Phillipe's Cousteau Family, and they all are at odds over Jacques Cousteau former mistress/wife who now controls the Cousteau Society and all the rights and trademarks. Poor Jacques must be spinning in his grave.

 

[sasscuba]

Ya it sucked! I want that hour of my life back!

 

[Rick Inman]

I had it on as white noise in the background.

It was pathetic.

 

[del_mo]

I liked his knit cap and turtleneck sweater. Guess granddaddy would have approved.

 

[Debraw]

I saw bits and pieces. I just didn't get it. Did they ever go inside of the "mind of the demon"or just fight about the fake shark and how it might kill Fabian? Also why weren't they using Aqua Lung equipment? I mean if you are going to use the Cousteau name, why don't you just go all the way with it?

 

[carlthecat]

I think it was a good concept... to build a model great white that could swim with other great whites with a diver inside. Who wouldn’t like to be a shark for a few hours? But that is where the praise ends.

The professionalism was disturbing. The shark never worked the way they thought it was going to. It swam terrible, had buoyancy problems, didn’t have a tracking system, and after all that, the skin started falling off. If I am not mistaken, this was the first time they tried the shark in the ocean. Now you tell me... who the hell designs a world-first shark replica submersible and doesn’t test it in shark-free water that is about 30' instead of great white infested water, next to a ledge that dropped to an abyss of thousands of feet, and then at night? What an idiot.

They lost the submersible at night because it didn’t have a tracking system. The support divers were at great risk because they had to search for the submersible while it was on the bottom in great white infested waters at night. The real question is this… they used tags to tag a few great whites so they could track them with a directional underwater microphone or whatever they use. Why didn’t they attach one of the tags to the submersible? Stupid. They could have found the downed and unresponsive submersible in a few minutes.

I have never claimed to be a genius, but after watching this show… maybe I shouldn’t sell myself so short… LOL!!!

Carl the Cat

 

[Walter]

Did anyone see last weeks special on CBS: Shark - Mind of the Demon.

Yeah, we did.

 

[mjh]

It was lame. The interesting part was watching how much openwater diving they did with the sharks, and the tagging. After doing the Gaudalupe trip last yr it was very interesting to see their behaviour without chum in the water.

 

[lock_washer]

If this show is an example of what Fabien Cousteau puts out...I hope they don't give him a series on Television.

 

[divebuddy68]

That show was pathetic. They had about 3 minutes of good footage and somehow made it last for 60 boring minutes.