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Profile Jean Jaubert
The new scientific director of The Cousteau Society, an expert on coral reefs, is picking up where the great explorer left off
A half-century ago Jacques Cousteau enthralled the world with his Oscar-winning documentary The Silent World, a paean to the Red Sea and its stunning coral reefs. Few scientists would have the temerity to follow in the legendary naturalist's footsteps, and fewer still the credentials to do so. But in a voyage that ended last March, marine biologist Jean Jaubert and his crew retraced Cousteau's path from Monaco to the coasts of Sudan and Eritrea, gathering data on how the Red Sea's reefs have fared in the 5 decades since the celebrity in the red skullcap brought them to worldwide fame.
As the new scientific director of The Cousteau Society (TCS), Jaubert, 63, is bringing his own derring-do on the high seas to craft sciencebased documentaries that, he and the society hope, will cast a Cousteau-esque spell on a new generation of viewers. The Red Sea voyage marks a return to the seas for TCS, which has struggled since Cousteau's death from a heart attack in 1997.
"Jean is a charismatic expedition leader and utterly fearless," says Peter Mumby, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter. U.K. Those attributes should serve Jaubert well as he continues Cousteau's voyages.
An undersea life
Jaubert's fascination with the underwater world began in the 1940s, during a childhood spent in a town on Algeria's Mediterranean coast. His uncle would bring home early black-and-white Cousteau films and, later, snorkeling equipment that was hard to come by. Even at age 12, Jaubert says, "I knew that I wanted to become a marine biologist." This curiosity blossomed into a passion for aquariums, which he'd build from scratch at home.
After obtaining degrees from the universities of Poitiers and Marseille in France, Jaubert set up shop at the University of Nice. But he hardly settled down. In 1974-75 he and two other scientists lived for a month in a "Hydrolab" nestled among reefs on the sea floor 20 meters...