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Cousteau's main concern is getting information from the deep, not interpreting it. His most recent invention is a two-man diving "saucer"' that operates free of the surface, maneuvers by electrically powered jets of water, can go down to 1,000 ft. In the works: an improved saucer that will reach 3,000 ft.; a tiny, two-man submarine that will stay down four days at 15,000 ft. Though he insists he is no scientist, Cousteau has the warm support of scientists around the world for his ceaseless searching of the sea. Concedes Director Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who calls Cousteau the founder of undersea archaeology: "Cousteau's patron saint should be Ulysses, not Aristotle."
Surrealistic Sailor. Cousteau and his wife Simone, a pert, green-eyed blonde with a lineage of French admirals, have a sprawling mansion in Monaco, a Paris apartment, a hideaway on the Riviera. "I have no home. My clothes are spread all over the world." says Cousteau cheerfully. Nearest thing to home is the bare cabin of the Calypso, where they may spend months at a time. Simone has become an expert Aqua-Lunger, tags along when Cousteau goes diving with their two sons, Jean-Michel, 21, and Philippe, 19. Cousteau declares that neither of them has ever gone swimming without mask and fins. ''They consider it infirme, and I think they are right."
Over the years, Cousteau has become as complex as any phenomenon he finds in the sea. He has tried his hand at painting (his pictures turn out vaguely surrealistic), relaxes aboard the Calypso with an accordion. Despite his scholarly air, accented by amber, half-lens spectacles, Cousteau is a man with an antic turn of mind, loves to improvise wacky film scenarios (a nearsighted bull gets contact lenses, routs the matador and escapes, only to starve because he cannot see the grass). But Cousteau is also a leader of men. When an inexperienced diver drowned trying to find the anchor of Calypso, Cousteau pulled on the dead man's Aqua-Lung and told his shaken crew: "I'm going down for the anchor. Those of you who want to help, follow me." The men followed. Cousteau found the anchor.
Records & Rapture. Cousteau maintains that he had no idea what he had started when he first stood on his finger and laughed aloud in his Aqua-Lung. Whole new fields are opening up for free divers, who, like Cousteau, soon tire of skewering fish as too easy (cracks one Frenchman: "It's like chasing elephants in a sports car"). The move is toward wreck-hounding, tracing underground springs through black and frigid waters, studying rock and reef, and taking underwater color movies. Equipped with Aqua-Lungs, divers are gradually taking over much of the work of the traditional helmeted diver. They hunt for jade off California, sink oil derricks off Louisiana, scrounge for sponge and pearl in the Mediterranean, raise cannon, coins and crucifixes from Spanish galleons sunk off Florida, and hoist history from ancient submerged towns such as Epidauros, which disappeared in a tidal wave off Yugoslavia in A.D. 365. Last week a Methodist minister and sometime oceanographer from Kansas City donned an Aqua-Lung and plunged into the Dead Sea—avowedly in search of the lost cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.