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Albert Falco, Cousteau's captain, dies at 84 (Washington Post)
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tanguera
Apr 29, 2012, 9:26:20 AM4/29/12
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/albert-falco-diver-and-ship-captain-for-jacques-cousteau-dies-at-84/2012/04/28/gIQAHYTJoT_story.html
Albert Falco, diver and ship captain for Jacques Cousteau, dies at 84
By Matt Schudel, Published: April 28
Albert Falco, who sailed alongside Jacques-Yves Cousteau for almost 40
years as the French underwater explorer’s principal diver and as
captain of Cousteau’s ship, the Calypso, died April 21 at his home in
Marseille, France. He was 84.
An entry on Mr. Falco’s French-language Facebook page said he had “a
long illness” but did not specify the cause of death.
Mr. Falco, who learned to swim almost as soon as he could walk, was
known as a master diver, mariner and ecologist long before he teamed
with Cousteau in 1952. They joined forces that year when Cousteau was
leading an underwater excavation of two ancient shipwrecks near Mr.
Falco’s native Marseille.
“Cousteau needed me for my natural instinct,” Mr. Falco later said,
according to London’s Telegraph newspaper. “There were things I knew
about the sea that he did not.”
From then on, the two Frenchmen were constant companions on oceangoing
voyages that took them around the world the equivalent of 12 times.
The angular, patrician-looking Cousteau became internationally
celebrated as the public face of oceanography and marine conservation.
But the stocky, unflappable Mr. Falco was the sunburned seafarer who
efficiently kept Cousteau’s mission afloat.
“In many ways, he was an equal to Cousteau,” Paul Watson, founder and
president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said Saturday in
an interview. “He was Cousteau’s chief diver and captain of the
Calypso. He was really the cornerstone of the whole Cousteau
enterprise.”
Mr. Falco was featured in “The Silent World,” the 1956 Academy Award-
winning documentary made by Cousteau and director Louis Malle that
introduced much of the world to the wonders of ocean life.
The film was an early call for ecological awareness, although Mr.
Falco said he and Cousteau were not conscientious stewards of the sea
at the time. He said they sometimes killed vast numbers of fish with
dynamite and allowed other animals to die in order to get better
footage. By the late 1950s, however, Cousteau and his crew became more
sensitive to the environmental dangers facing animals and plants in
the sea.
“I killed a lot of fish in my youth,” Mr. Falco said in a documentary
under preparation by French filmmaker Sylvain Braun. “But later I went
with Cousteau, and with a team of scientists, and through them I
understood what was happening to the world. It was then that I
completely changed my tune. I threw away my harpoon to take up a
camera.”
More than anyone else, Cousteau was able to draw attention to
threatened marine life and to the beauty of the deep through scores of
books and a television series, “The Undersea World of Jacques
Cousteau,” that was broadcast around the globe. He made almost 100
films, including three that won Academy Awards.
When Cousteau devised watertight capsules to descend to the ocean
floor, including the diving saucer, Mr. Falco was usually at the helm.
In 1980, he piloted a submersible vessel that found a U.S. warship
that had sunk in Lake Ontario in 1813. On other expeditions, he
descended to the ocean floor, capturing remarkable images of little-
known species of plants and fish.
In 1962, Mr. Falco and another diver spent a week underwater in a
Cousteau experiment of living on the ocean floor. Their underwater
house contained beds, a toilet, kitchen, electric lights and a
television, and doctors went down each day to check the divers’
health.
Mr. Falco was also the longtime skipper of the Calypso, the wooden-
hulled, 141-foot converted minesweeper that was Cousteau’s seagoing
laboratory. Once, while piloting the Calypso up the Potomac River in
1985, he exuberantly commented on his years of waterborne adventure:
“Fantastique life with Captain Cousteau!”
Albert Falco was born Oct. 17, 1927, in Marseille, and within 18
months had learned to swim. He and his father often went boating and
diving in the nearby turquoise inlets and coves.
“Ever since then, water has been a natural element for me,” he said.
There was almost nothing under the surface of the ocean that Mr. Falco
hadn’t encountered at one time or another, including sharks, which he
described as his “best friends.”
“But they circle,” he told The Washington Post in 1987, “and when the
circles get tighter and tighter, I’ve been in situations where I had
to leave.”
Mr. Falco retired in 1990 but continued to make environmental films
and work with conservation groups until shortly before his death.
Cousteau died in 1997.
Mr. Falco lived in recent years in Marseille and on the Caribbean
island of Martinique. Survivors include his wife, Maryvonne; a
daughter; and four grandchildren.
When a Washington Post reporter asked Mr. Falco whether he was
recognized on the street in Marseille, he admitted that he was, then
added: “It is the fish who recognize me more than the people — the
fish, the birds and the sea.”
Albert Falco, diver and ship captain for Jacques Cousteau, dies at 84
By Matt Schudel, Published: April 28
Albert Falco, who sailed alongside Jacques-Yves Cousteau for almost 40
years as the French underwater explorer’s principal diver and as
captain of Cousteau’s ship, the Calypso, died April 21 at his home in
Marseille, France. He was 84.
An entry on Mr. Falco’s French-language Facebook page said he had “a
long illness” but did not specify the cause of death.
Mr. Falco, who learned to swim almost as soon as he could walk, was
known as a master diver, mariner and ecologist long before he teamed
with Cousteau in 1952. They joined forces that year when Cousteau was
leading an underwater excavation of two ancient shipwrecks near Mr.
Falco’s native Marseille.
“Cousteau needed me for my natural instinct,” Mr. Falco later said,
according to London’s Telegraph newspaper. “There were things I knew
about the sea that he did not.”
From then on, the two Frenchmen were constant companions on oceangoing
voyages that took them around the world the equivalent of 12 times.
The angular, patrician-looking Cousteau became internationally
celebrated as the public face of oceanography and marine conservation.
But the stocky, unflappable Mr. Falco was the sunburned seafarer who
efficiently kept Cousteau’s mission afloat.
“In many ways, he was an equal to Cousteau,” Paul Watson, founder and
president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said Saturday in
an interview. “He was Cousteau’s chief diver and captain of the
Calypso. He was really the cornerstone of the whole Cousteau
enterprise.”
Mr. Falco was featured in “The Silent World,” the 1956 Academy Award-
winning documentary made by Cousteau and director Louis Malle that
introduced much of the world to the wonders of ocean life.
The film was an early call for ecological awareness, although Mr.
Falco said he and Cousteau were not conscientious stewards of the sea
at the time. He said they sometimes killed vast numbers of fish with
dynamite and allowed other animals to die in order to get better
footage. By the late 1950s, however, Cousteau and his crew became more
sensitive to the environmental dangers facing animals and plants in
the sea.
“I killed a lot of fish in my youth,” Mr. Falco said in a documentary
under preparation by French filmmaker Sylvain Braun. “But later I went
with Cousteau, and with a team of scientists, and through them I
understood what was happening to the world. It was then that I
completely changed my tune. I threw away my harpoon to take up a
camera.”
More than anyone else, Cousteau was able to draw attention to
threatened marine life and to the beauty of the deep through scores of
books and a television series, “The Undersea World of Jacques
Cousteau,” that was broadcast around the globe. He made almost 100
films, including three that won Academy Awards.
When Cousteau devised watertight capsules to descend to the ocean
floor, including the diving saucer, Mr. Falco was usually at the helm.
In 1980, he piloted a submersible vessel that found a U.S. warship
that had sunk in Lake Ontario in 1813. On other expeditions, he
descended to the ocean floor, capturing remarkable images of little-
known species of plants and fish.
In 1962, Mr. Falco and another diver spent a week underwater in a
Cousteau experiment of living on the ocean floor. Their underwater
house contained beds, a toilet, kitchen, electric lights and a
television, and doctors went down each day to check the divers’
health.
Mr. Falco was also the longtime skipper of the Calypso, the wooden-
hulled, 141-foot converted minesweeper that was Cousteau’s seagoing
laboratory. Once, while piloting the Calypso up the Potomac River in
1985, he exuberantly commented on his years of waterborne adventure:
“Fantastique life with Captain Cousteau!”
Albert Falco was born Oct. 17, 1927, in Marseille, and within 18
months had learned to swim. He and his father often went boating and
diving in the nearby turquoise inlets and coves.
“Ever since then, water has been a natural element for me,” he said.
There was almost nothing under the surface of the ocean that Mr. Falco
hadn’t encountered at one time or another, including sharks, which he
described as his “best friends.”
“But they circle,” he told The Washington Post in 1987, “and when the
circles get tighter and tighter, I’ve been in situations where I had
to leave.”
Mr. Falco retired in 1990 but continued to make environmental films
and work with conservation groups until shortly before his death.
Cousteau died in 1997.
Mr. Falco lived in recent years in Marseille and on the Caribbean
island of Martinique. Survivors include his wife, Maryvonne; a
daughter; and four grandchildren.
When a Washington Post reporter asked Mr. Falco whether he was
recognized on the street in Marseille, he admitted that he was, then
added: “It is the fish who recognize me more than the people — the
fish, the birds and the sea.”
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