Who we are

Cousteau Divers is a French non-profit organization founded in 2009 by Pierre-Yves Cousteau, son of famous ocean explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, for citizen-science, raising awareness, and the conservation of marine life worldwide.

What we do

Citizen-science

Since 2009, Cousteau Divers has developed several citizen-science projects, which have progressively led to the development of the Remora project (formerly Project Hermes). Remoras are submersible devices that measure depth, temperature and GPS location during a scuba dive. Their modular design allows for additional sensors to be fitted in the future. Remoras were designed to measure temperatures with minimal latency and to send data over WiFi with minimal effort. All you need to do is take it diving, rinse in between dives, and charge it occasionally. The data is then summarized and displayed in real time here.

As of May 2023, 50 remoras are being distributed to early testers. During this pilot phase we prioritize dive centers, diving professionals and very active divers. If you meet these criteria and would like to request a remora, please send us a message. Dive centers who have a remora and transmit data regularly will be promoted as Cousteau Dive Centers on this site.

In time, we hope to develop the following functionalities: to export the dive profiles you collected to your favorite dive log app, and to provide access to raw, bulk, anonymized data (can currently be manually requested via our Contact page). We also plan to use a Digital Object Identifier so that when scientists reference Cousteau Divers datasets, we will be able to provide feedback to the community and track how the data is being used.

Cousteau Divers has also been collecting diver photos since 2009, all geotagged and timestamped, in an effort to make diver observations of marine life and human impacts scientifically significant. Today we continue this image collection and emphasize the participation of divers and scientists to help identify species sightings underwater.

 

Raising awareness

Since 2009, Cousteau Divers has been actively raising awareness to environmental issues through public conferences, media outreach and online social media. Follow us on social media (@CousteauDivers) to see more!

Marine conservation

Cousteau Divers has advocated for the creation of Marine Protected Areas worldwide, and worked towards the creation of one in Santorini, Greece with the support of local stakeholders and institutions. Read more about this project here.

Why we do it

As passionate divers we are all witnesses of the degradation of the natural environment caused by human activities. Cousteau Divers’ vision is to empower this community to act in meaningful ways to help monitor and protect marine life. We love the Ocean, we want to protect it, we need to know it.

Website credits:

Ghislain Auzillon, Chris Gibson, Laurent De Blasis, Michel Naufal, Unsplash