If you're a Babyboomer or older, there's a good chance that you know about Jean Jacques Cousteau from watching his television series, THE UNDERSEA WORLD OF JACQUES COUSTEAU. This weekly series ran for eight years beginning in 1968. Cousteau, with his gift for communication and his lifelong experience as an underwater explorer, may have done more to make us understand the importance of the three-quarters of our planet that is covered with water than any other person who has ever lived.

His getting into underwater exploration didn't come from a conscious plan. It was an accident--literally. At age 25, having already graduated from the French Naval Academy, he was in a serious car crash that badly injured his arms. To get back the strength in his arms, he began a program of swimming in the Mediterranean.

One day a fellow officer gave him a pair of pearl fisherman's goggles to keep the salt water from stinging his eyes. That gift changed Cousteau's life. When he submerged, he saw a jungle that no one who merely floated on the surface had ever seen.He decided to spend his life sharing this world with others.

His initial aim was to be an explorer, to "look through nature's keyhole," but events pushed him into something bigger. When he returned to the Mediterranean in the 1970s, the teeming beauty that had moved him so deeply forty years before had--disappeared. Instead, he saw a gray, barren landscape. What he called "vandalism of the oceans" had killed off the once teeming life there. He began calling attention to coral reef destruction, oil spills, overfishing, garbage dumping, and sea-floor dredging for sand and gravel.

His concern was that if the oceans should die, that

would signal the end for not only marine life, but for all the other animals and plants of this Earth, including man. He proclaims, "I am ready to fight with all my strength, tooth and nail, so that the humans who come after me might continue to live--and to live pleasantly--as long as possible."

Addressing a group of science journalists in 1992, he said, "However serious problems are, such as pollution, desertification, depletion of the ozone layer, warming up of the planet, transportation of dangerous materials by air or by sea, or elimination of living species, we remain practically unaware of the main cause of all the threats that menace our planet and our future: the population explosion."

Cousteau at 86 has progressed from explorer to environmentalist to what he is today, philosopher. "The question that I am posing, that everybody poses is: What are we here for, and what is the goal of life, what should we pursue, and what should we try to achieve?"

He concludes that there are two things that really count. The first is the joy of living. Joy he believes, comes from sharing. "Each time you forget yourself, to think about others, you're reaching a joyful way of life."

The second is the pride of being a human being, "which constitutes the most stringent and harsh ethics that there can be. No law, no regulation, can replace the kind of ethics that the pride of being a human being imposes on anyone."

When a friend once asked him, "Who has had the greatest influence on your life?" he answered, "You know, the way I have to answer a question like this may make people smile and think that I'm being very naive, but it's true: God. That's it."