Cousteau diver writes memoirs

‘Frogmen’ recounts the adventures of a crewmember aboard the Calypso.

Richard Hyman has published his personal account of life with legendary French explorer Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Cousteau famously travelled the high seas with his dedicated crew aboard his own research vessel, Calypso. The Frenchman – who died aged 87 in 1997 – was a two-time Academy Award winner, receiving 40 Emmy nominations and creating 100 films. He also co-invented the aqua-lung.

In the book ‘Frogmen’, Hyman recalls that in 1973 at the age of eighteen and just out of high school, he drove a truck from Los Angeles to the Canadian wilderness. There he worked with Cree Native Americans to build a cabin for the Cousteau team to winter in and film beavers. Subsequent journeys include diving in Florida’s warm springs with manatees and off the panhandle with stone crabs.

Months later, the team moved to Mexico’s Yucatan to board the Calypso, a relatively small and unsteady wooden ship, where they studied lobsters on an uninhabited island.

On his final voyage with Cousteau, Hyman experienced treacherous dives on the USS Monitor shipwreck off North Carolina. He also tells of skeletons inside wrecks off Martinique, not to mention close encounters with pirates and drug smugglers.

‘Frogmen’ is the inspiring true adventure of a young man who pays homage to one of the greatest explorers and visionaries of all time. It is now available in paperback, and to download for iPad and Kindle.